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KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 



KNIGHTS 



AND THEIR DAYS 



I 

BY DR. 



DORAN 



AUTHOR OF "LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND OF THE HOUSE OF HANOVER, 
"TABLE TRAITS," "HABITS AND MEN," ETC. 



" Oh, 'tis a brave profession, and rewards 
All loss we meet, with double weight of glory." 

Shirley (The Gentleman of Venice.) 




REDFIELD 

34 BEEKMAN STREET, NEW YORK 
1856 



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TO 

PHILIPPE WATIER, ESQ. 

IN MEMORY OF MERRY NIGHTS AND DAYS NEAR METZ AND THE 
MOSELLE, 

THIS LITTLE VOLUME 
Ks mscribeti 

BY HIS VERY SINCERE FRIEND, 

THE AUTHOR. 



CONTENTS. 



A FRAGMENTARY PROLOGUE PAGE 9 

THE TRAINING OF PAGES 30 

KNIGHTS AT HOME 36 

LOVE IN CHEVALIERS, AND CHEVALIERS IN LOVE 51 

DUELLING, DEATH, AND BURIAL 65 

THE KNIGHTS WHO "GREW TIRED OF IT" 78 

FEMALE KNIGHTS AND JEANNE DARC 104 

THE CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTENDOM 113 

SIR GUY OF WARWICK, AND WHAT BEFELL HIM 133 

GARTERIANA 148 

FOREIGN KNIGHTS OF THE GARTER 170 

THE POOR KNIGHTS OF WINDSOR, AND THEIR DOINGS 184 

THE KNIGHTS OF THE SAINTE AMPOULE 194 

THE ORDER OF THE HOLY GHOST 200 

JACQUES DE LELAING 208 

THE FORTUNES OF A KNIGHTLY FAMILY 228 

THE RECORD OF RAMBOUILLET 263 

SIR JOHN FALSTAFF 276 

STAGE KNIGHTS 295 

STAGE LADIES, AND THE ROMANCE OF HISTORY 312 



8 CONTENTS. 

THE KlNGS OF ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS ; FROM THE NORMANS TO THE 

STUARTS PAGE 329 

"THE INSTITUTION OF A gentleman" 351 

THE KINGS OF ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS J THE STUARTS 358 

THE SPANISH MATCH 364 

THE KINGS OF ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS ; FROM STUART TO BRUNSWICK 375 

RECIPIENTS OF KNIGHTHOOD 388 

RICHARD CARR, PAGE, AND GUT FAUX, ESQUIRE 410 

ULRICH VON HUTTEN . . . . „. 420 

SHAM KNIGHTS 439 

PIECES OF ARMOR 455 



THE 

KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 



A FRAGMENTARY PROLOGUE. 

" La bravoure est une qualite innee, on ne se la donne pas." 

Napoleon I. 

Dr. Lingard, when adverting to the sons of Henry II., and 
their knightly practices, remarks that although chivalry was con- 
sidered the school of honor and probity, there was not overmuch 
of those or of any other virtues to be found among the members 
of the chivalrous orders. He names the vices that were more 
common, as he thinks, and probably with some justice. Hallam, 
on the other hand, looks on the institution of chivalry as the best 
school of moral discipline in the Middle Ages : and as the great 
and influential source of human improvement. "It preserved," 
he says, "an exquisite sense of honor, which in its results worked 
as great effects as either of the powerful spirits of liberty and re- 
ligion, which have given a predominant impulse to the moral sen- 
timents and energies of mankind." 

The custom of receiving arms at the age of manhood is supposed, 
by the same author, to have been established among the nations 
that overthrew the Eoman Empire ; and he cites the familiar pas- 
sage from Tacitus, descriptive of this custom among the Germans. 
At first, little but bodily strength seems to have been required on 
the part of the candidate. The qualifications and the forms of 
investiture changed or improved with the times. 



10 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

In a general sense, chivalry, according to Hallam, may be re- 
ferred to the age of Charlemagne, when the Caballarii, or horse- 
men, became the distinctive appellation of those feudal tenants 
and allodial proprietors who were bound to serve on horseback. 
When these were equipped and formally appointed to their mar- 
tial duties, they were, in point of fact, knights, with so far more 
incentives to distinction than modern soldiers, that each man de- 
pended on himself, and not on the general body. Except in certain 
cases, the individual has now but few chances of distinction ; and 
knighthood, in its solitary aspect, may be said to have been blown 
up by gunpowder. 

As examples of the true knightly spirit in ancient times, Mr. 
Hallam cites Achilles, who had a supreme indifference for the 
question of what side he fought upon, had a strong affection for a 
Jriend, and looked at death calmly. I think Mr. Hallam over-rates 
the bully Greek considerably. His instance of the Cid Ruy 
Diaz, as a perfect specimen of what the modern knight ought to 
have been, is less to be gainsaid. 

In old times, as in later days, there were knights who acquired 
the appellation by favor rather than service ; or by a compelled 
rather than a voluntary service. The old landholders, the Cabal- 
larii, or Milites, as they came to be called, were landholders who 
followed their lord to the field, by feudal obligation : paying their 
rent, or part of it, by such service. The voluntary knights were 
those " younger brothers," perhaps, who sought to amend their 
indifferent fortunes by joining the banner of some lord. These 
were not legally knights, but they might win the honor by their 
prowess ; and thus in arms, dress, and title, the younger brother 
became the equal of the wealthy landholders. He became even 
their superior, in one sense, for as Mr. Hallam adds: — "The 
territorial knights became by degrees ashamed of assuming a title 
which the others had won by merit, till they themselves could 
challenge it by real desert." 

The connection of knighthood with feudal tenure was much 
loosened, if it did not altogether disappear, by the Crusades. 
There the knights were chiefly volunteers who served for pay : 
all feudal service there was out of the question. Its connection 
with religion was, on the other hand, much increased, particularly 



A FRAGMENTARY PROLOGUE. 11 

among the Norman knights who had not hitherto, like the Anglo- 
Saxons, looked upon chivalric investiture as necessarily a religious 
ceremony. The crusaders made religious professors, at least, of 
all knights, and never was one of these present at the reading 
of the gospel, without holding the point of his sword toward the 
book, in testimony of his desire to uphold what it taught by force 
of arms. From this time the passage into knighthood was a sol- 
emn ceremony ; the candidate was belted, white-robed, and ab- 
solved after due confession, when his sword was blessed, and 
Heaven was supposed to be its director. "With the love of God 
was combined love for the ladies. What was implied was that 
the knight should display courtesy, gallantry, and readiness to 
defend, wherever those services were required by defenceless 
women. Where such was bounden duty — but many knights did 
not so understand it — there was an increase of refinement in 
society; and probably there is nothing overcharged in the old 
ballad which tells us of a feast at Perceforest, where eight hun- 
dred knights sat at a feast, each of them with a lady at his side, 
eating off the same plate ; the then fashionable sign of a refined 
friendship, mingled with a spirit of gallantry. That the husbands 
occasionally looked with uneasiness upon this arrangement, is illus- 
trated in the unreasonably jealous husband in the romance of 
" Lancelot du Lac ;" but, as the lady tells him, he had little right 
to cavil at all, for it was an age since any knight had eaten with 
her off the same plate. 

Among the Romans the word virtue implied both virtue and 
valor — as if bravery in a man were the same thing as virtue in 
a woman. It certainly did not signify among Roman knights that 
a brave man was necessarily virtuous. In more recent times the 
word gallantry has been made also to take a double meaning, im- 
plying not only courage in man, but his courtesy toward woman. 
Both in ancient and modern times, however, the words, or their 
meanings, have been much abused. At a more recent period, 
perhaps, gallantry was never better illustrated than when in an 
encounter by hostile squadrons near Cherbourg, the adverse fac- 
tions stood still, on a knight, wearing the colors of his mistress, 
advancing from the ranks of one party, and challenging to single 
combat the cavalier in the opposite ranks who was the most 



12 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

deeply in love with his mistress. There was no lack of adversa- 
ries, and the amorous knights fell on one another with a fury- 
little akin to love. 

A knight thus slain for his love was duly honored by his lady 
and contemporaries. Thus we read in the history of Gyron le 
Courtois, that the chivalric king so named, with his royal cousin 
Melyadus, a knight, by way of equerry, and a maiden, went to- 
gether in search of the body of a chevalier who had fallen pour 
les beaux yeux of that very lady. They found the body pictu- 
resquely disposed in a pool of blood, the unconscious hand still 
grasping the hilt of the sword that had been drawn in honor of 
the maiden. " Ah, beauteous friend !" exclaims the lady, " how 
dearly hast thou paid for my love ! The good and the joy we 
have shared have only brought thee death. Beauteous friend, 
courteous and wise, valiant, heroic, good knight in every guise, 
since thou has lost thy youth for me in this manner, in this strait, 
and in this agony, as it clearly appears, what else remains for me 
to suffer for thy sake, unless that I should keep you company ? 
Friend, friend, thy beauty has departed for the love of me, thy 
flesh lies here bloody. Friend, friend, we were both nourished 
together. I knew not what love was when I gave my heart to 
love thee," &c, &c, &c. "Young friend," continues the lady, 
" thou wert my joy and my consolation : for to see thee and to 
speak to thee alone were sufficient to inspire joy, &c, &c, &c. 
Friend, what I behold slays me, I feel that death is within my 
heart." The lady then took up the bloody sword, and requested 
Melyadus to look after the honorable interment of the knight on 
that spot, and that he would see her own body deposited by her 
" friend's" side, in the same grave. Melyadus expressed great 
astonishment at the latter part of the request, but as the lady in- 
sisted that her hour was at hand, he promised to fulfil all her 
wishes. Meanwhile the maiden knelt by the side of the dead 
knight, held his sword to her lips, and gently died upon his breast. 
Gyron said it was the wofullest sight that eye had ever beheld ; 
but all courteous as Gyron was, and he was so to such a remark- 
able degree that he derived a surname from his courtesy, I say 
that in spite of his sympathy and gallantry, he appears to have 
had a quick eye toward making such profit as authors could make 



A FRAGMENTARY PROLOGUE. 13 

in those days, from ready writing upon subjects of interest. Be- 
fore another word was said touching the interment of the two 
lovers, Gyron intimated that he would write a ballad upon them 
that should have a universal circulation, and be sung in all lands 
where there were gentle hearts and sweet voices. Gyron per- 
formed what he promised, and the ballad of " Absdlon and Cesala," 
serves to show what very rough rhymes the courteous poet could 
employ to illustrate a romantic incident. Let it be added that, 
however the knights may sometimes have failed in their truth, 
this was very rarely the case with the ladies. When Jordano 
Bruno was received in his exile by Sir Philip Sidney, he requited 
the hospitality by dedicating a poem to the latter. In this dedica- 
tion, he says : " With one solitary exception, all misfortunes that 
flesh is heir to have been visited on me. I have tasted every kind 
of calamity but one, that of finding false a woman's love." 

It was not every knight that could make such an exception. 
Certainly not that pearl of knights, King Arthur himself. 
What a wife had that knight in the person of Guinever ? Nay, 
he is said to have had three wives of that name, and that all of 
them were as faithless as ladies well could be. Some assert that 
the described deeds of these three are in fact but the evil-doings 
of one. However this may be, I may observe summarily here 
what I have said in reference to Guinever in another place. With 
regard to this triple-lady, the very small virtue of one third of the 
whole will not salubriously leaven the entire lump. If romance 
be true, and there is more about the history of Guinever than any 
other lady — she was a delicious, audacious, winning, seductive, 
irresistible, and heartless hussy ; and a shameless ! and a bare- 
faced ! Only read " Sir Lancelot du Lac !" Yes, it can not be 
doubted but that in the voluminous romances of the old day, there 
was a sprinkling of historical facts. Now, if a thousandth part of 
what is recorded of this heart-bewitching Guinever be true, she 
must have been such a lady as we can not now conceive of. True 
daughter of her mother Venus, when a son of Mars was not at 
hand, she could stoop to Mulciber. If the king was not at home, 
she could listen to a knight. If both were away, esquire or page 
might speak boldly without fear of being unheeded ; and if all 
were absent, in the chase, or at the fray, there was always a good- 



14 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

looking groom in the saddle-room with whom Guinever could con- 
verse, without holding that so to do was anything derogatory. I 
know no more merry reading than that same ton-weight of 
romance which goes by the name of " Sir Lancelot du Lac." But 
it is not of that sort which Mrs. Chapone would recommend to 
young ladies, or that Dr. Cumming would read aloud in the Duke 
of Argyll's drawing-room. It is a book, however, which a grave 
man a little tired of his gravity, may look into between serious 
studies and solemn pursuits — a book for a lone winter evening by 
a library-fire, with wine and walnuts at hand ; or for an old-fash- 
ioned summer's evening, in a bower through whose foliage the sun 
pours his adieu, as gorgeously red as the Burgundy in your flask. 
Of a truth, a man must be " in a concatenation accordingly," ere 
he may venture to address himself to the chronicle which tells of 
the " bamboches," " fredaines," and " bonibances," of Guinever the 
Frail, and of Lancelot du Lac. 

We confess to having more regard for Arthur than for his 
triple-wife Guinever. As I have had occasion to say in other 
pages, " I do not like to give up Arthur !" I love the name, the 
hero, and his romantic deeds. I deem lightly of his light o'love 
bearing. Think of his provocation both ways ! Whatever the 
privilege of chivalry may have been, it was the practice of too 
many knights to be faithless. They vowed fidelity, but they were 
a promise-breaking, word-despising crew. On this point I am 
more inclined to agree with Dr. Lingard than with Mr. Hallam. 
Honor was ever on their lips, but not always in their hearts, and 
it was little respected by them, when found in the possession of 
their neighbor's wives. How does Scott consider them in this 
respect, when in describing a triad of knights, he says, 

" There were two who loved their neighbor's wires, 
And one who loved his own." 

Yet how is it that knights are so invariably mentioned with long- 
winded laudation by Romish writers — always excepting Lingard 
— when they desire to illustrate the devoted spirit of olden times ? 
Is it that the knights were truthful, devout, chaste, God-fearing ? 
not a jot ! Is it because the cavaliers cared but for one thing, in 
the sense of having fear but for one thing, and that the devil ? 



A FRAGMENTARY PROLOGUE. 15 

To escape from being finally triumphed over by the Father of 
Evil, they paid largely, reverenced outwardly, confessed unre- 
servedly, and were absolved plenarily. That is the reason why 
chivalry was patted on the back by Rome. At the same time we 
must not condemn a system, the principles of which were calcu- 
lated to work such extensive ameliorations in society as chivalry. 
Christianity itself might be condemned were we to judge of it by 
the shortcomings of its followers. 

But even Mr. Hallam is compelled at last, reluctantly, to confess 
that the morals of chivalry were not pure. After ' all his praise 
of the system, he looks at its literature, and with his eye resting 
on the tales and romances written for the delight and instruction 
of chivalric ladies and gentlemen, he remarks that the " violation 
of marriage vows passes in them for an incontestable privilege of 
the brave and the fair; and an accomplished knight seems 
to have enjoyed as undoubted prerogatives, by general consent of 
opinion, as were claimed by the brilliant courtiers of Louis XV." 
There was an especial reason for this, the courtiers of Louis XV. 
might be anything they chose, provided that with gallantry they 
were loyal, courteous, and munificent. Now loyalty, courtesy, and 
that prodigality which goes by the name of munificence, were ex- 
actly the virtues that were deemed most essential to chivalry. 
But these were construed by the old knights as they were by the 
more modern courtiers. The first took advantages in combat that 
would now be deemed disloyal by any but a Muscovite. The 
second would cheat at cards in the gaming saloons of Versailles, 
while they would run the men through who spoke lightly of their 
descent. So with regard to courtesy, the knight was full of 
honeyed phrases to his equals and superiors, but was as coarsely 
arrogant as Menschikoff to an inferior. In the same way, Louis 
XIV., who would never pass one of his own scullery-maids with- 
out raising his plumed beaver, could address terms to the ladies 
of his court, which, but for the sacred majesty which was supposed 
to environ his person, might have purchased for him a severe cas- 
tigation. Then consider the case of that " first gentleman in Eu- 
rope," George, Prince of Wales : he really forfeited his right to 
the throne by marrying a Catholic lady, Mrs. Fitzherbert, and he 
freed himself unscrupulously from the scrape by uttering a lie. 



16 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

And so again with munificence ; the greater part of these knights 
and courtiers were entirely thoughtless of the value of money* 
At the Field of the Cloth of Gold, for instance, whole estates 
were mortgaged or sold, in order that the owners might outshine 
all competitors in the brilliancy and quality of their dress. This 
sort of extravagance makes one man look glad and all his relatives 
rueful. The fact is that when men thus erred, it was for want of 
observance of a Christian principle ; and if men neglect that ob- 
servance, it is as little in the power of chivalry as of masonry to 
mend him. There was " a perfect idea" of chivalry, indeed, but 
if any knight ever realized it in his own person, he was, simply, 
nearly a perfect Christian, and would have been still nearer to 
perfection in the latter character if he had studied the few simple 
rules of the system of religion rather than the stilted and un- 
steady ones of romance. The study of the latter, at all events, 
did not prevent, but in many instances caused a dissoluteness of 
manners, a fondness for war rather than peace, and a wide distinc- 
tion between classes, making aristocrats of the few, and villains of 
the many. 

Let me add here, as I have been speaking of the romance of 
" Lancelot du Lac," that I quite agree with Montluc, who after 
completing his chronicle of the History of France, observed that 
it would be found more profitable reading than either Lancelot or 
Amadis. La Noue especially condemns the latter as corrupting 
the manners of the age. Southey, again, observes that these 
chivalric romances acquired their poison in France or in Italy. 
The Spanish and Portuguese romances he describes as free from 
all taint. In the Amadis the very well-being of the world is made 
to rest upon chivalry. " What would become of the world," it is 
asked in the twenty-second book of the Amadis, " if God did not 
provide for the defence of the weak and helpless against unjust 
usurpers ? And how could provision be made, if good knights 
were satisfied to do nothing else but sit in chamber with the ladies ? 
What would then the world become, but a vast community of 
brigands ?" 

Lamotte Levayer was of a different opinion. " Les armes," he 
says, when commenting upon chivalry and arms generally ; " Les 
armes detruisent tous les arts excepte ceux qui favorisent la gloire." 



A FRAGMENTARY PROLOGUE. 17 

In Germany, too, where chivalry was often turned to the oppres- 
sion of the weak rather than employed for their protection, the 
popular contempt and dread of " knightly principles" were early 
illustrated in the proverb, " Er will Bitter an mir werden," He 
wants to play the knight over me. In which proverb, knight 
stands for oppressor or insulter. In our own country the order 
came to be little cared for, but on different grounds. 

Dr. Nares in his " Heraldic Anomalies," deplores the fact that 
mere knighthood has fallen into contempt. He dates this from 
the period when James I. placed baronets above knights. The 
hereditary title became a thing to be coveted, but knights who 
were always held to be knights bachelors, could not of course be- 
queath a title to child or children who were not supposed in her- 
aldry to exist. The Doctor quotes Sir John Feme, to show that 
Olibion, the son of Asteriel, of the line of Japhet, was the first 
knight ever created. The personage in question was sent forth to 
battle, after his sire had smitten him lightly nine times with Ja- 
phet's falchion, forged before the flood. There is little doubt but 
that originally a knight was simply Knecht, servant of the king. 
Dr. Nares says that the Thanes were so in the north, and that 
these, although of gentle blood, exercised the offices even of 
cooks and barbers to the royal person. But may not these offices 
have been performed by the " unter Thans," or deputies ? I shall 
have occasion to observe, subsequently, on the law which deprived 
a knight's descendants of his arms, if they turned merchants ; but 
in Saxon times it is worthy of observation, that if a merchant 
made three voyages in one of his own ships, he was thenceforward 
the Thane's right-worthy, or equal. 

Among the Romans a blow on the ear gave the slave freedom. 
Did the blow on the shoulder given to a knight make a free-ser- 
vant of him ? Something of the sort seems to have been intended. 
The title was doubtless mainly but not exclusively military. To 
dub, from the Saxon word duhban, was either to gird or put on, 
" don," or was to strike, and perhaps both may be meant, for the 
knight was girt with spurs, as well as stricken, or geschlagen as 
the German term has it. 

There was striking, too, at the unmaking of a knight. His 
heels were then degraded of their spurs, the latter being beaten 

2 



18 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

or chopped away. " His heels deserved it," says Bertram of the 
cowardly Parolles, " his heels deserved it for usurping of his spurs 
so long." The sword, too, on such occasions, was broken. 

Fuller justly says that " the plainer the coat is, the more ancient 
and honorable." He adds, that "two colors are necessary and 
most highly honorable: three are very highly honorable; four 
commendable ; five excusable ; more disgraceful." He must have 
been a gastronomic King-at-Arms, who so loaded a "coat" with 
fish, flesh, and fowl, that an observer remarked, "it was well 
victualled enough to stand a siege." Or is the richest coloring, 
but, as Fuller again says, " Herbs vert, being natural, are better 
than Or" He describes a " Bend as the best ordinary, being a 
belt athwart," but a coat bruised with a bar sinister is hardly a 
distinction to be proud of. If the heralds of George the Second's 
time looked upon that monarch as the son of Count Konigsmark, 
as Jacobite-minded heralds may have been malignant enough to 
do, they no doubt mentally drew the degrading bar across the 
royal arms, and tacitly denied the knighthood conferred by what 
they, in such foolish case, would have deemed an illegitimate hand. 
Alluding to reasons for some bearings, Fuller tells us that, 
" whereas the Earls of Oxford anciently gave their ' coats' plain, 
quarterly gules and or, they took afterward in the first a mullet or 
star-argent, because the chief of the house had a falling-star, as 
it was said, alighting on his shield as he was fighting in the Holy 
Land." 

It is to be observed that when treating of precedency, Fuller 
places knights, or "soldiers" with seamen, civilians, and physi- 
cians, and after saints, confessors, prelates, statesmen, and judges. 
Knights and physicians he seems to have considered as equally 
terrible to life ; but in his order of placing he was led by no par- 
ticular principle, for among the lowest he places " learned writers," 
and " benefactors to the public." He has, indeed, one principle, 
as may be seen, wherein he says, " I place first princes, good man- 
ners obliging all other persons to follow them, as religion obliges 
me to follow God's example by a royal recognition of that original 
precedency, which he has granted to his vicegerents." 

The Romans are said to have established the earliest known 
order of knighthood ; and the members at one time wore rings, as 



A FRAGMENTARY PROLOGUE. 19 

a mark of distinction, as in later times knights wore spurs. The 
knights of the Holy Roman Empire were members of a modern 
order, whose sovereigns are not, what they would have themselves 
considered, descendants of the Caesars. If we only knew what 
our own Round Table was, and where it stood, we should be en- 
abled to speak more decisively upon the question of the chevaliers 
who sat around it. But it is undecided whether the table was not 
really a house. At it, or in it, the knights met during the season 
of Pentecost, but whether the assembly was collected at Winches- 
ter or Windsor no one seems able to determine ; and he would 
impart no particularly valuable knowledge even if he could. 

Knighthood was a sort of nobility worth having, for it testified 
to the merit of the wearer. An inherited title should, indeed, 
compel him who succeeds to it, to do nothing to disgrace it : but 
preserving the lustre is not half so meritorious as creating it. 
Knights bachelors were so called because the distinction was con- 
ferred for some act of personal courage, to reward for which the 
offspring of the knight could make no claim. He was, in this re- 
spect, to them as though he had been never married. The knight 
bachelor was a truly proud man. The word hnecht simply implied 
a servant, sworn to continue good service in honor of the sover- 
eign, and of God and St. George. " I remain your sworn ser- 
vant" is a form of epistolary valediction which crept into the letters 
of other orders in later times. The manner of making was more 
theatrical than at the present time ; and we should now smile if 
we were to see, on a lofty scaffold in St. Paul's, a city gentleman 
seated in a chair of silver adorned with green silk, undergoing ex- 
hortation from the bishop, and carried up between two lords, to be 
dubbed under the sovereign's hand, a good knight, by the help of 
Heaven and his patron saint. 

In old days belted earls could create knights. In modern times, 
the only subject who is legally entitled to confer the honor of 
chivalry is the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; and some of his 
" subjects" consider it the most terrible of his privileges. The at- 
tempt to dispute the right arose, perhaps, from those who dreaded 
the exercise of it on themselves. However this may be, it is cer- 
tain that the vexata questio was finally set at rest in 1823, when 
the judges declared that the power in question undoubtedly resided 



20 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

in the Lords Lieutenant, since the Union, as it did in the viceroys 
who reigned vicariously previous to that period. According to 
the etiquette of heraldry, the distinctive appellation " Sir" should 
never be omitted even when the knight is a noble of the first he- 
reditary rank. " The Right Honorable Sir Hugh Percy, Duke 
of Northumberland," would have been the proper heraldic denning 
of his grace when he became Knight of the Garter, for it is a rule 
that " the greater dignity doth never drown the lesser, but both 
stand together in one person." 

A knight never surrendered his sword but to a knight. " Are 
you knight and gentleman ?" asked Suffolk, when, four hundred 
years ago, he yielded to Regnault: "I am a gentleman," said 
Regnault, " but I am not yet a knight." Whereupon Suffolk bade 
him kneel, dubbed him knight, received the accustomed oaths, and 
then gave up his old sword to the new chevalier. 

Clark considered that the order was degraded from its exclu- 
sively military character, when membership was conferred upon 
gownsmen, physician, burghers, and artists. He considered that 
civil merit, so distinguished, was a loss of reputation to military 
knights. The logic by which he arrives at such a conclusion is 
rather of the loosest. It may be admitted, however, that the mat- 
ter has been specially abused in Germany. Monsieur About, that 
clever gentleman, who wrote " Tolla" out of somebody else's book, 
very pertinently remarks in his review of the fine-art department 
of the Paris Exhibition, that the difference between English and 
German artists is, that the former are well-paid, but that very few 
of them are knights, while the latter are ill-paid and consequently 
ill-clothed ; but, for lack of clothes, have abundance of ribands. 

Dr. Nares himself is of something of the opinion of Clark, and 
he ridicules the idea of a chivalric and martial title being given to 
brewers, silversmiths, attorneys, apothecaries, upholsterers, hosiers, 
tailors, &c. He asserts that knighthood should belong only to 
military members : but of these no inconsiderable number would 
have to be unknighted, or would have to wait an indefinite time 
for the honor were the old rule strictly observed, whereby no man 
was entitled to the rank and degree of knighthood, who had not 
actually been in battle and captured a prisoner with his own 
hands.. With respect to the obligation on knights to defend and 



A FRAGMENTARY PROLOGUE. 21 

maintain all ladies, gentlewomen, widows, and orphans ; the one 
class of men may be said to be just as likely to fulfil this obliga- 
tion, as the other class. 

France, Italy, and Germany, long had their forensic knights, 
certain titles at the bar giving equal privileges ; and the obliga- 
tions above alluded to were supposed to be observed by these 
knights — who found esquires in their clerks, in the forensic war 
which they were for ever waging in defence of right. Unhappily 
these forensic chevaliers so often fought in defence of wrong and 
called it right, that the actual duty was indiscriminately performed 
or neglected. 

It has often been said of " orders" that they are indelible. How- 
ever this may be with the clergy, it is especially the case with 
knights. To whatever title a knight might attain, duke, earl, or 
baron, he never ceased to be a knight. In proof too that the latter 
title was considered one of augmentation, is cited the case of Louis 
XI., who, at his coronation, was knighted by Philip, Duke of Bur- 
gundy. " If Louis," says an eminent writer (thus cited by Dr. 
Nares), "had been made duke, marquis, or earl, it would have 
detracted from him, all those titles being in himself." 

The crown, when it stood in need of the chivalrous arms of its 
knights, called for the required feudal service, not from its earls 
as such, but from its barons. To every earldom was annexed a 
barony, whereby their feudal service with its several dependent 
duties was alone ascertained. " That is," says Berington, in his 
Henry II., " the tenure of barony and not of earldom constituted 
the legal vassal of the crown. Each earl was at the same time a 
baron, as were the bishops and some abbots and priors of orders." 

Some of these barons were the founders of parish churches, but 
the terms on which priest and patron occasionally lived may be 
seen in the law, whereby patrons or feudatarii killing the rector, 
vicar, or clerk of their church, or mutilating him, were condemned 
to lose their rights ; and their posterity, to the fourth generation, 
was made incapable of benefice or prelacy in religious houses. 
The knightly patron was bound to be of the same religious opin- 
ions, of course, as his priest, or his soul had little chance of being 
prayed for. In later times we have had instances of patrons de- 
termining the opinions of the minister. Thus as a parallel, or 



22 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

rather in contrast with measures as they stood between Sir Knight 
and Sir Priest, may be taken a passage inserted in the old deeds 
of the Baptist chapel at Oulney. In this deed the managers or 
trustees injoined that " no person shall ever be chosen pastor of 
this church, who shall differ in his religious sentiments from the 
Rev. John Gibbs of Newcastle. It is rather a leap to pass thus 
from the baronial knights to the Baptist chapels, but the matter 
has to do with my subject at both extremities. Before leaving it 
I will notice the intimation proudly made on the tombstone in 
Bunhill Fields Cemetery, of Dame Mary Page, relict of Sir 
George Page. The lady died more than a century and a quarter 
ago, and although the stone bears no record of any virtue save 
that she was patient and fearless under suffering, it takes care to 
inform all passers-by, that this knight's lady, "in sixty-seven 
months was tapped sixty-six times, and had taken away two hun- 
dred and forty gallons of water, without ever repining at her case, 
or ever fearing its operation." I prefer the mementoes of knight's 
ladies in olden times which recorded their deeds rather than their 
diseases, and which told of them, as White said of Queen Mary, 
that their "knees were hard with kneeling." 

I will add one more incident, before changing the topic, having 
reference as it has to knights, maladies, and baptism. In 1660, 
Sir John Floyer was the most celebrated knight-physician of his 
day. He chiefly tilted against the disuse of baptismal immersion. 
He did not treat the subject theologically, but in a. sanitary point 
of view. He prophesied that England would return to the prac- 
tice as soon as people were convinced that cold baths were safe 
and useful. He denounced the first innovators who departed from 
immersion, as the destroyers of the health of their children and of 
posterity. Degeneracy of race, he said, had followed, hereditary 
diseases increased, and men were mere carpet-knights unable to 
perform such lusty deeds as their duly-immersed forefathers. 

There are few volumes which so admirably illustrate what 
knights should be, and what they sometimes were not, as De Join- 
ville's Chronicle of the Crusades of St. Louis — that St. Louis, 
who was himself the patron-saint of an order, the cross of which 
was at first conferred on princes, and at last on perruquiers. The 
faithful chronicler rather profanely, indeed, compares the royal 



•V FRAGMENTARY PROLOGUE. 23 

knight with God himself, " As God died for his people, so did 
St. Louis often peril his life, and incurred the greatest dangers, for 
the people of his kingdom." After all, this simile is as lame as it 
is profane. The truth, nevertheless, as it concerns St. Louis, is 
creditable to the illustrious king, saint, and chevalier. "In his 
conversation he was remarkably chaste, for I never heard him, at 
any time, utter an indecent word, nor make use of the devil's 
name ; which, however, now is very commonly uttered by every 
one, but which I firmly believe, is so far from being agreeable to 
God, that it is highly displeasing to him." The King St. Louis, 
mixed water with his wine, and tried to force his knights to follow 
his example, adding, that " it was a beastly thing for an honorable 
man to make himself drunk." This was a wise maxim, and one 
naturally held by a son, whose mother had often declared to him, 
that " she would rather he was in his grave, than that he should 
commit a mortal sin." And yet wise as Ins mother, and wise as 
her son was, the one could not give wise religious instructors to 
the latter, nor the latter perceive where their instruction was illogi- 
cal. That it icas so, may be discerned in the praise given by De 
Joinville, to the fact, that the knightly king in his dying moments 
" called upon God and his saints, and especially upon St. James, 
and St. Genevieve, as his intercessors" 

It is interesting to learn from such good authority as De Join- 
ville, the manner in which the knights who followed St. Louis 
prepared themselves for their crusading mission. " When I was 
ready to set out, I sent for the Abbot of Cheminon, who was at 
that time considered as the most discreet man of all the White 
Monks, to reconcile myself with him. He gave me my scarf, and 
bound it on me, and likewise put the pilgrim's staff in my hand. 
Instantly after I quitted the castle of Joinville, without even re- 
entering it until my return from beyond sea. I made pilgrimages 
to all the holy places in the neighborhood, such as Bliecourt, St. 
Urban, and others near to Joinville. I dared never turn my eyes 
that way, for fear of feeling too great regret, and lest my courage 
should fail on leaving my two fine children, and my fair castle of 
Joinville, which I loved in my heart." "One touch of nature 
makes the whole world kin," and here we have the touch the poet 
speaks of. Down the Saone and subsequently down the Rhone, 



24 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

the crusaders flock in ample vessels, but not large enough to contain 
their steeds, which were led by grooms along the banks. When all 
had re-embarked at Marseilles and were fairly out at sea, " the cap- 
tain made the priests and clerks mount to the castle of the ship, and 
chant psalms in praise of God, that he might be pleased to grant 
us a prosperous voyage." While they were singing the Veni 
Creator in full chorus, the mariners set the sails " in the name of 
God," and forthwith a favorable breeze sprang up in answer to 
the appeal, and knights and holy men were speedily careering 
over the billows of the open sea very hopeful and exceedingly 
sick. " I must say here," says De Joinville, who was frequently 
so disturbed by the motion of the vessel, so little of a knight, and 
so timid on the water as to require a couple of men to hold him as 
he leant over the side in the helpless and unchivalrous attitude of 
a cockney landsman on board a Boulogne steamer — " I must say," 
he exclaims — sick at the very reminiscence, " that he is a great 
fool who shall put himself in such dangers, having wronged any 
one, or having any mortal sins on his conscience ; for when he 
goes to sleep in the evening, he knows not if in the morning he 
may not find himself under the sea." 

This was a pious reflection, and it was such as many a knight, 
doubtless, made on board a vessel, on the castle of which priests 
and clerks sang Veni Creator and the mariners bent the sail u in 
the name of God." But whether the holy men did not act up to 
their profession, or the secular knights cared not to profit by their 
example, certain it is that in spite of the saintly services and for- 
malities on board ship, the chevaliers were no sooner on shore, 
than they fell into the very worst of practices. De Joinville, 
speaking of them at Damietta, remarks that the barons, knights, 
and others, who ought to have practised self-denial and economy, 
were wasteful of their means, prodigal of their supplies, and ad- 
dicted to banquetings, and to the vices which attend on over-luxu- 
riant living. There was a general waste of everything, health 
included. The example set by the knights was adopted by the 
men-at-arms, and the debauchery which ensued was terrific. The 
men were reduced to the level of beasts, and wo to the women or 
girls who fell into their power when out marauding. It is singular 
10 find De Joinville remarking that the holy king was obliged " to 



A FRAGMENTARY PROLOGUE. 25 

wink at the greatest liberties of his officers and men." The pic- 
ture of a royal saint winking at lust, rapine, and murder, is not an 
agreeable one. " The good king was told," says the faithful chroni- 
cler, " that at a stone's throw round his own pavilion, were several 
tents whose owners made profit by letting them out for infamous pur- 
poses." These tents and tabernacles of iniquity were kept by the 
king's own personal attendants, and yet the royal saint winked at 
them ! The licentiousness was astounding, the more so as it was 
practised by Christian knights, who were abroad on a holy purpose, 
but who went with bloody hands, unclean thoughts, and spiritual 
songs to rescue the Sepulchre of Christ from the unworthy keep- 
ing of the infidel. Is it wonderful that the enterprise was ulti- 
mately a failure ? 

De Joinville himself, albeit purer of life than many of his com- 
rades, was not above taking unmanly advantage of a foe. The 
rule of chivalry, which directed that all should be fair in fight, 
was never regarded by those chivalrous gentlemen when victory 
was to be obtained by violating the law. Thus, of an affair on the 
plains before Babylon, we find the literary swordsman complacently ' 
recording that he "perceived a sturdy Saracen mounting his horse, 
which was held by one of his esquires by the bridle, and while he 
was flitting his hand on his saddle to mount, I gave him," says 
De Joinville, " such a thrust with my spear, which I pushed as 
far as I was able, that he fell down dead." This was a base and 
cowardly action. There was more of the chivalrous in what fol- 
lowed : " The esquire, seeing his lord dead, abandoned master 
and horse ; but, watching my motions, on my return struck me 
with his lance such a blow between my shoulders as drove me on 
my horse's neck, and held me there so tightly that I could not 
draw my sword, which was girthed round me. I was forced to 
draw another sword which was at the pommel of my saddle, and 
it was high time ; but when he saw I had my sword in my hand, 
he withdrew his lance, which I had seized, and ran from me." 

I have said that this knight who took such unfair advantage of a 
foe, was more of a Christian nevertheless than many of his fello.ws. 
This is illustrated by another trait highly illustrative of the princi- 
ples which influenced those brave and pious warriors. De Joinville 
remarks that on the eve of Shrove-tide, 1249, he saw a thing 



26 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

which lie "mast relate." On the vigil of that day, he tells us, 
there died a very valiant and prudent knight, Sir Hugh de Land- 
ricourt, a follower of De Joinville's own banner. The burial ser- 
vice was celebrated ; but half-a-dozen of * De Joinville's knights, 
who were present as mourners, talked so irreverently loud that the 
priest was disturbed as he was saying mass. Our good chronicler 
went over to them, reproved them, and informed them that " it was 
unbecoming gentlemen thus to talk while the mass was celebrating." 
The ungodly half-dozen, thereupon, burst into a roar of laughter, 
and informed De Joinville, in their turn, that they were discussing 
as to which of the six should marry the widow of the defunct Sir 
Hugh, then lying before them on his bier! De Joinville, with 
decency and common sense " rebuked them sharply, and said such 
conversation was indecent and improper, for that they had too soon 
forgotten their companion." From this circumstance De Joinville 
tries to draw a logical inference, if not conclusion. He makes a 
sad confusion of causes and effects, rewards and punishments, 
practice and principle, human accidents and especial interferences 
on the part of Heaven. For instance, after narrating the mirth 
of the knights at the funeral of Sir Hugh, and their disputing as 
to which of them should woo the widow, he adds: "Now it hap- 
pened on the morrow, when the first grand battle took place, 
although we may laugh at their follies, that of all the six not one 
escaped death, and they remained unburied. The wives of the 
whole six re-married ! This makes it credible that God leaves no 
such conduct unpunished. With regard to myself I fared little 
tetter, for I was grievously wounded in the battle of Shrove Tues- 
day. I had besides the disorder in my legs and mouth before 
spoken of, and such a rheum in my head it ran through my mouth 
and nostrils. In addition I had a double fever called a quartan, 
from which God defend us ! And with these illnesses was I con- 
fined to my bed for half of Lent." And thus, if the married knights 
were retributively slain for talking about the wooing of a comrade's 
widow, so De Joinville himself was somewhat heavily afflicted for 
having undertaken to reprove them ! I must add one more inci- 
dent, however, to show how in the battle-field the human and 
Christian principle was not altogether lost. 

The poor priest, whom the wicked and wedded knights had 



A FRAGMENTARY PROLOGUE. 27 

interrupted in the service of the mass by follies, at which De Join- 
ville himself seems to think that men may, perhaps, be inclined to 
laugh, became as grievously ill as De Joinville himself. " And 
one day," says the latter, " when he was singing mass before me 
as I lay in my bed, at the moment of the elevation of the host 
I saw him so exceedingly weak that he was near fainting ; but 
when I perceived he was on the point of falling to the ground, I 
flung myself out of bed, sick as I was, and taking my coat, em- 
braced him, and bade him be at his ease, and take courage from 
Him whom he held in his hand. He recovered some little ; but I 
never quitted him till he had finished the mass, which he completed, 
and this was the last, for he never celebrated another, but died ; 
God receive his soul !" This is a pleasanter picture of Christian 
chivalry than any other that is given by this picturesque chronicler. 

Chivalry, generally, has been more satirized and sneered at by 
the philosophers than by any other class of men. The sages 
stigmatize the knights as mere boasters of bravery, and in some 
such terms as those used by Dussaute, they assert that the boasters 
of their valor are as little to be trusted as those who boast of their 
probity. " Defiez vous de quiconque parle toujours de sa probite 
comme de quiconque parle toujours de bravoure." 

It will not, however, do for the philosophers to sneer at their 
martial brethren. Now that Professor Jacobi has turned from 
grave studies for the benefit of mankind, to the making of infernal 
machines for the destruction of brave and helpless men, at a dis- 
tance, that very unsuccessful but would-be homicide has, as far as 
he himself is concerned, reduced science to a lower level than that 
occupied by men whose trade is arms. But this is not the first 
time that philosophers have mingled in martial matters. The 
very war which has been begun by the bad ambition of Russia, 
may be traced to the evil officiousness of no less a philosopher than 
Leibnitz. It was this celebrated man who first instigated a Eu- 
ropean monarch to seize upon a certain portion of the Turkish 
dominion, whereby to secure an all but universal supremacy. 

The monarch was Louis XIV., to whom Leibnitz addressed 
himself, in a memorial, as to the wisest of sovereigns, most worthy 
to have imparted to him a project at once the most holy, the most 
just, and the most easy of accomplishment. Success, adds the 



28 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

philosopher, would secure to France the empire of the seas and 
of commerce, and make the French king the supreme arbiter of 
Christendom. Leibnitz at once names Egypt as the place to be 
seized upon ; and after hinting what was necessary, by calling his 
majesty a '''miracle of secresy," he alludes to further achievements . 
by stating of the one in question, that it would cover his name 
with an immortal glory, for having cleared, whether for himself 
or his descendants, "the route for exploits similar to those of 
Alexander." 

There is no country in the memorialist's opinion the conquest 
of which deserves so much to be attempted. As to any provoca- 
tion on the part of the Turkish sovereign of Egypt, he does not 
pause to advise the king even to feign having received cause of 
offence. The philosopher goes through a resume of the history 
of Egypt, and the successive conquests that had been made of, as 
well as attempts against it, to prove that its possession was account- 
ed of importance in all times ; and he adds that its Turkish master 
was just then in such debility that France could not desire a more 
propitious opportunity for invasion. This argument shows that 
when the Czar Nicholas touched upon this nefarious subject, he 
not only was ready to rob this same " sick man," the Turk, but he 
stole his arguments whereby to illustrate his opinions, and to prove 
that his sentiments were well-founded. 

" By a single fortunate blow," says Leibnitz, " empires may be in 
an instant overthrown and founded. In such wars are found the 
elements of high power and of an exalted glory." It is unneces- 
sary to repeat all the seductive terms which Leibnitz employs to 
induce Louis XIY. to set Ins chivalry in motion against the Turk- 
ish power. Egypt he calls " the eye of countries, the mother of 
grain, the seat of commerce." He hints that Muscovy was even 
then ready to take advantage of any circumstance that might fa- 
cilitate her way to the conquest of Turkey. The conquest of 
Egypt then was of double importance to France. Possessing 
that, France would be mistress of the Mediterranean, of a great 
part of Africa and Asia, and " the king of France could then, by 
incontestable right, and with the consent of the Pope, assume the 
title of Emperor of the East." A further bait held out is, that in 
such a position he could " hold the pontiffs much more in his power 



A FRAGMENTARY PROLOGUE. 29 

than if they resided at Avignon." He sums up by saying that 
there would be on the part of the human race, " an everlasting 
reverence for the memory of the great king to whom so many 
miracles were due !" " With the exception of the philosopher's 
stone," finally remarks the philosopher, " I know nothing that can 
be imagined of more importance than the conquest of Egypt." 

Leibnitz enters largely into the means to be employed, in order 
to insure success ; among them is a good share of mendacity ; and 
it must be acknowledged that the spirit of the memorial and its 
objects, touching not Egypt alone, but the Turkish empire gene- 
rally, had been well pondered over by the Czar before he made 
that felonious attempt in which he failed to find a confederate. 

The original of the memorial, which is supposed to have been 
presented to Louis XIV. just previous to his invasion of Holland 
— and, as some say, more with the intention of diverting the king 
from his attack on that country, than with any more definite 
object — was preserved in the archives of Versailles till the period 
of the great revolution. A copy in the handwriting of Leibnitz 
was, however, preserved in the Library at Hanover. Its contents 
were without doubt known to Napoleon when he was meditating 
that Egyptian conquest which Leibnitz pronounced to be so easy 
of accomplishment ; a copy, made at the instance of Marshal Mor- 
tier for the Royal Library in Paris, is now in that collection. 

The suggestion of Leibnitz, that the seat, if not of universal 
monarchy, at least of the mastership of Christendom, was in the 
Turkish dominions, has never been forgotten by Russia ; and it is 
very possible that some of its seductive argument may have in- 
fluenced the Czar before he impelled his troops into that war, 
which showed that Russia, with all its boasted power, could neither 
take Silistria nor keep Sebastopol. 

But in this fragmentary prologue, which began with Lingard 
and ends with Leibnitz, we have rambled over wide ground. 
Let us become more orderly, and look at those who were to be 
made knights. 



30 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 



THE TRAINING OF PAGES. 

" What callest thou Page ? What is its humor ? 
Sir ; he is Nobilis ephebus, and 
Puer regius, student of Knighthood, 
Breaking hearts and hoping to break lances." — Old Play. 

I have in another chapter noticed the circumstance of knight- 
hood conferred on an Irish prince, at so early an age as seven 
years. This was the age at which, in less precocious England, 
noble youths entered wealthy knights' families as pages, to learn 
obedience, to be instructed in the use of weapons, and to acquire 
a graceful habit of tending on ladies. The poor nobility, especially, 
found their account in this system, which gave a gratuitous educa- 
tion to their sons, in return for services which were not considered 
humiliating or dishonorable. These boys served seven years as 
pages, or varlets — sometimes very impudent varlets — and at 
fourteen might be regular esquires, and tend their masters where 
hard blows were dealt and taken — for which encounters they 
" riveted with a sigh the armor they were forbidden to wear." 

Neither pages, varlets, nor household, could be said to have been 
always as roystering as modern romancers have depicted them. 
There was at least exceptions to the rule — if there was a rule 
of roystering. Occasionally, the lads were not indifferently taught 
before they left their own homes. That is, not indifferently taught 
for the peculiar life they were about to lead. Even the Borgias, 
infamous as the name has become through inexorable historians 
and popular operas, were at one time eminently respectable and 
exemplarily religious. Thus in the household of the Duke of 
Gandia, young Francis Borgia, his son, passed his time " among 



THE TRAINING OF PAGES, 31 

the domestics in wonderful innocence and piety." It was the only 
season of Ins life, however, so passed. Marchangy asserts that 
the pages of the middle ages were often little saints ; but this 
could hardly have been the case since " espiegle comme un page," 
" hardi comme un page," and other illustrative sayings have sur- 
vived even the era of pagedom. Indeed, if we may believe the 
minstrels, and they were often as truth-telling as the annalist, the 
pages were now and then even more knowing and audacious than 
their masters. When the Count Ory was in love with the young 
Abbess of Farmoutier, he had recourse to his page for counsel. 

"Hola ! mem page, venez me conseiller, 
L' amour me berce, je ne puis sommeiller ; 
Comment me prendre pour dans ce couvent entrer?" 

How ready was the ecstatic young scamp with his reply : — 

" Sire il faut prendre quatorze chevaliers, 
Et tous en nonnes il vous les faut habiller, 
Puis, a nuit close, a la porte il faut heurter." 

What came of this advice, the song tells in very joyous terms, for 
which the reader may be referred to that grand collection the 
" Chants et Chansons de la France." 

On the other hand, Mr. Kenelm Digby, who is, be it said in 
passing, a painter of pages, looking at his object through pink- 
colored glasses, thus writes of these young gentlemen, in his 
'-Mores Catholici." 

'•' Truly beautiful does the fidelity of chivalrous youth appear 
in the page of history or romance. Every master of a family in 
the middle ages had some young man in his service who would 
have rejoiced to shed the last drop of his blood to save him, and 
who, like Jonathan's armor-bearer, would have replied to his sum- 
mons : ' Fac omnia quae placent animo tuo ; perge quo cupis ; et 
ero tecum ubicumque volueris.' When Gyron le Courtois re- 
solved to proceed on the adventure of the Passage perilleux, we 
read that the valet, on hearing the frankness and courtesy with 
which his lord spoke to him, began to weep abundantly, and said, 
all in tears, ' Sire, know that my heart tells me that sooth, if you 
proceed further, you will never return ; that you will either perish 
there, or you will remain in prison; but, nevertheless, nothing 



< 



32 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

shall prevent me going with jou. Better die with you, if it be 
God's will, than leave you in such guise to save my own life ;' 
and so saying, he stepped forward and said, ' Sire, since you will 
not return according to my advice, I will not leave you this time, 
come to me what may.' Authority in the houses of the middle 
ages," adds Mr. Digby, " was always venerable. The very term 
seneschal is supposed to ljave implied l old knight,' so that, as with 
the Greeks, the word signifying ' to honor,' and to ' pay respect,' 
was derived immediately from that which denoted old age, irps*fie6u 
being thus used in the first line of the Eumenides. Even to those 
who were merely attached by the bonds of friendship or hospitality, 
the same lessons and admonitions were considered due. John 
Francis Picus of Mirandola mentions his uncle's custom of fre- 
quently admonishing his friends, and exhorting them to a holy life. 
' I knew a man,' he says, ' who once spoke with him on the subject 
of manners, and who was so much moved by only two words from 
him, which alluded to the death of Christ, as the motive for avoid- 
ing sin, that from that hour, he renounced the ways of vice, and 
reformed his whole life and manner.' ',' 

"We smile to find Mr. Digby mentioning the carving of angels 
in stone over the castle-gates, as at Vincennes, as a proof that 
the pages who loitered about there were little saints. But we 
read with more interest, that " the Sieur de Ligny led Bayard 
home with him, and in the evening preached to him as if he had 
been his own son, recommending him to have heaven always be- 
fore his eyes." This is good, and that it had its effect on Bayard, 
we all know; nevertheless that chevalier himself was far from 
perfect. 

With regard to the derivation of Seneschal as noticed above, 
we may observe that it implies " old man of skill." Another word 
connected with arms is " Marshal," which is derived from Mar, 
" a horse," and Schalk, " skilful," one knowing in horses ; hence 
"Marechal ferrant," as assumed by French farriers. Schalk, 
however, I have seen interpreted as meaning "servant." Earl 
Marshal was, originally, the knight who looked after the royal 
horses and stables, and all thereto belonging. 

But to return to the subject of education. If all the sons ot 
noblemen, in former days, were as well off for gentle teachers as 



THE TRAINING OF PAGES. 33 

old historians and authors describe them to have been, they un- 
doubtedly had a great advantage over some of their descendants 
of the present day. In illustration of this fact it is only necessary 
to point to the sermons recently delivered by a reverend pedagogue 
to the boys who have the affliction of possessing him as head- 
master. It is impossible to read some of these whipping sermons, 
without a feeling of intense disgust. Flagellation is there hinted 
at, mentioned, menaced, caressed as it were, as if in the very idea 
there was a sort of delight. The worst passage of all is where the 
amiable master tells his youthful hearers that they are noble by 
birth, that the greatest humiliation to a noble person is the inflic- 
tion of a blow, and that nevertheless, he, the absolute master, may 
have to flog many of them. How the young people over whom 
he rules, must love such an instructor ! The circumstance reminds 
me of the late Mr. Ducrow, who was once teaching a boy to go 
through a difficult act of horsemanship, in the character of a page. 
The boy was timid, and his great master applied the whip to him 
unmercifully. Mr. Joseph Grimaldi was standing by, and looked 
very serious, considering his vocation. "You see," remarked 
Ducrow to Joey, " that it is quite necessary to make an impression 
on these young fellows." — "Very likely," answered Grimaldi, 
dryly, "but it can hardly be necessary to make the whacks so 
hard !" 

The discipline to which pages were subjected in the houses of 
knights and noblemen, does not appear to have been at all of a 
severe character. Beyond listening to precept from the chaplain, 
heeding the behests of their master, and performing pleasant duties 
about their mistress, they seem to have been left pretty much to 
themselves, and to have had, altogether, a pleasant time of it. The 
poor scholars had by far a harder life than your " Sir page." And 
this stern discipline held over the pale student continued down to 
a very recent, that is, a comparatively recent period. In Neville's 
play of " The Poor Scholar," written in 1662, but never acted, the 
character of student-life at college is well illustrated. The scene 
lies at the university, where Eugenes, jun., albeit he is called " the 
poor scholar," is nephew of Eugenes, sen., who is president of a 
college. Nephew and uncle are at feud, and the man in authority 
imprisons his young kinsman, who contrives to escape from du- 

3 



34 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

ranee vile, and to marry a maiden called Morplie. The fun of 
the marriage is, that the young couple disguise themselves as coun- 
try lad and lass, and the reverend Eugenes, sen., unconsciously 
couples a pair whom he would fain have kept apart. There are 
two other university marriages as waggishly contrived ; and when 
the ceremonies are concluded, one of the newly-married students, 
bold as any page, impudently remarks to the duped president, 
" Our names are out of the butteries, and our persons out of your 
dominions." The phrase shows that, in the olden time, an " in- 
genuus puer" at Oxford, if he were desirous of escaping censure, 
had only to take his name off the books. But there were worse 
penalties than mere censure. The author of " The Poor Scholar" 
makes frequent allusion to the whipping of undergraduates, 
stretched on a barrel, in the buttery. There was long an accred- 
ited tradition that Milton had been thus degraded. In Neville's 
play, one of the young Benedicks, prematurely married, remarks, 
" Had I been once in the butteries, they'd have their rods about 
me." To this remark Eugenes, jun., adds another in reference to 
his uncle the president, " He would have made thee ride on a bar- 
rel, and made you show your fat cheeks." But it is clear that 
even this terrible penalty could be avoided by young gentlemen, 
if they had their wits about them ; for the fearless Aphobos makes 
boast, " My name is cut out of the college butteries, and I have 
now no title to the mounting a barrel." 

Young scions of noble houses, in the present time, have to en- 
dure more harsh discipline than is commonly imagined. They 
are treated rather like the buttery undergraduates of former days, 
than the pages who, in ancient castles, learned the use of arms, 
served the Chatellaine, and invariably fell in love with the daugh- 
ters. They who doubt this fact have only to read those Whipping 
Sermons to which I have referred. Such discourses, in days of 
old, to a body of young pages, would probably have cost the 
preacher more than he cared to lose. In these days, such sermons 
can hardly have won affection for their author. The latter, no 
doubt, honestly thought he was in possession of a vigorously salu- 
brious principle ; but there is something ignoble both in the dis- 
cipline boasted of, and especially in the laying down the irresistible 
fact to young gentlemen that a blow was the worst offence that 



THE TRAINING OF PAGES. 35 

could be inflicted on persons of their class, but that he could and 
would commit such assault upon them, and that gentle and noble 
as they were, they dared not resent it !" 

The pages of old time occasionally met with dreadful harsh 
treatment from their chivalrous master. The most chivalrous of 
these Christian knights could often act cowardly and unchristian- 
like. I may cite, as an instance, the case of the great and warlike 
Duke of Burgundy, on his defeat at Muret. He was hemmed in 
between ferocious enemies and the deep lake. As the lesser of 
two evils, he plunged into the latter, and his young page leaped 
upon the crupper as the Duke's horse took the water. The stout 
steed bore his double burden across, a breadth of two miles, not 
without difficulty, yet safely. The Duke was, perhaps, too alarmed 
himself, at first, to know that the page was hanging on behind ; 
but when the panting horse reached the opposite shore, sovereign 
Burgundy was so wroth at the idea that the boy, by clinging to 
his steed, had put the life of the Duke in peril, that he turned 
upon him and poignarded the poor lad upon the beach. Lassels, 
who tells the story, very aptly concludes it with the scornful yet 
serious ejaculation, " Poor Prince ! thou mightest have given an- 
other offering of thanksgiving to God for thy escape, than this !" 
But " Burgundy" was rarely gracious or humane. " Carolus 
Pugnax," says Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, "made 
Henry Holland, late Duke of Exeter, exiled, run after his horse, 
like a lackey, and would take no notice of him." This was the 
English peer who was reduced to beg his way in the cities of 
Flanders. 

Of pages generally, we shall have yet to speak incidentally — 
meanwhile, let us glance at their masters at home. 



36 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DATS. 



KNIGHTS AT HOME. 

" Entrez Messieurs ; jouissez-vous de mon coin-de-feu. Me voila, chez 
moi !" — Arlequin a St. Germains. 

Ritter Eric, of Lansfeldt, remarked, that next to a battle he 
dearly loved a banquet. We will, therefore, commence the 
" Knight at Home," by showing him at table. Therewith, we 
may observe, that the Knights of the Round Table appear gener- 
ally to have had very solid fare before them. King Arthur — 
who is the reputed founder of this society, and who invented the 
table in order that when all his knights were seated none could 
claim precedency over the others — is traditionally declared to 
have been the first man who ever sat down to a whole roasted ox. 
Mr. Bickerstaff, in the " Tatler," says that " this was certainly the 
best way to preserve the gravy ;" and it is further added, that " he 
and. his knights set about the ox at his round table, and usually 
consumed it to the very bones before they would enter upon any 
debate of moment." 

They had better fare than the knights-errant, who 

" as some think, 
Of old, did neither eat nor drink, 
Because when thorough deserts vast, 
And regions desolate they passed, 
"Where belly-timber above ground, 
Or under, was not to be found, 
Unless they grazed, there's not one word 
Of their provision on record : 
Which made some confidently write, 
They had no stomachs but to fight/' 

This, however, is only one poet's view of the dietary of the er- 
rant gentlemen of old. Pope is much nearer truth when he says, 
that — 



KNIGHTS AT HOME. 37 

" In days of old our fathers went to war, 
Expecting sturdy blows and scanty fare, 
Their beef they often in their morion stewed, 
And in their basket-hilt their beverage brewed." 

— that basket-hilt of which it is so well said in Hudibras, that — 

" it would hold broth, 
And serve for fight and dinner both." 

The lords and chivalric gentlemen who fared so well and fought 
so stoutly, were not always of the gentlest humor at home. It has 
been observed that Piedmontese society long bore traces of the 
chivalric age. An exemplification is afforded us in Gallenga's 
History of Piedmont. It will serve to show how absolute a master 
a powerful knight and noble was in his own house. Thus, from 
Gallenga we learn that Antonio Grimaldi, a nobleman of Chieri, 
had become convinced of the faithlessness of his wife. He com- 
pelled her to hang up with her own hand her paramour to the 
ceiling of her chamber ; then he had the chamber walled up, doors 
and windows, and only allowed the wretched woman as much air 
and light, and administered with his own hand as much food and 
drink, as would indefinitely prolong her agony. And so he watched 
her, and tended her with all that solicitude which hatred can sug- 
gest as well as love, and left her to grope alone in that blind soli- 
tude, with the mute testimony of her guilt — a ghastly object on 
which her aching eyes were riveted, day by day, night after night, 
till it had passed through every loathsome stage of decomposition. 
This man was surely worse in his vengeance than that Sir Giles 
de Laval, who has come down to us under the name of Blue- 
Beard. 

This celebrated personage, famous by his pseudonym, was not 
less so in his own proper person. There was not a braver knight 
in France, during the reigns of Charles VI. and VII., than this 
Marquis de Laval, Marshal of France. The English feared him 
almost as much as they did the Pucelle. The household of tins 
brave gentleman was, however, a hell upon earth ; and licentious- 
ness, blasphemy, attempts at sorcery, and, more than attempts at, 
very successful realizations of, murder were the kittle foibles of 
this man of many wives. He excelled the most extravagant mon- 



38 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

archs in his boundless profusion, and in the barbaric splendor of 
his court or house : the latter was thronged with ladies of very 
light manners, players, mountebanks, pretended magicians, and as 
many cooks as Julian found in the palace of his predecessor at 
Constantinople. There were two hundred saddle-horses in his 
stable, and he had a greater variety of dogs than could now be 
found at any score of " fanciers" of that article. He employed the 
magicians for a double purpose. They undertook to discover 
treasures for his use, and pretty handmaids to tend on his illustri- 
ous person, or otherwise amuse him by the display of their accom- 
plishments. Common report said that these young persons were 
slain after a while, their blood being of much profit in makino- in- 
cantations, the object of which was the discovery of gold. Much 
exaggeration magnified his misdeeds, which were atrocious enough 
in their plain, unvarnished infamy. At length justice overtook 
this monster. She did not lay hold of him for his crimes against 
society, but for a peccadillo which offended the Duke of Brittany. 
Giles de Laval, for this offence, was burnt at Nantes, after being 
strangled — such mercy having been vouchsafed to him, because 
he was a gallant knight and gentleman, and of course was not to 
be burnt alive like any petty villain of peasant degree. He had 
a moment of weakness at last, and just previous to the rope being 
tightened round his neck, he publicly declared that he should never 
have come to that pass, nor have committed so many excesses, 
had it not been for his wretched education. Thus are men, shrewd 
enough to drive bargains, and able to discern between virtue and 
vice, ever ready, when retribution falls on them at the scaffold, to 
accuse their father, mother, schoolmaster, or spiritual pastor. Few 
are like the knight of the road, who, previous to the cart sliding 
from under him, at Tyburn, remarked that he had the satisfaction, 
at least, of knowing that the position he had attained in society 
was owing entirely to himself. " May I be hanged," said he, " if 
that isn't the fact." The finisher of the law did not stop to argue 
the question with him, but, on cutting him down, remarked, with 
the gravity of a cardinal before breakfast, that the gentleman had 
wronged the devil and the ladies, in attributing his greatness so 
exclusively to hfe own exertions. 

I have said that perhaps Blue-Beard's little foibles have been 






KNIGHTS AT HOME. 59 

exaggerated ; but, on reflection, I am not sure that this pleasant 
hypothesis can be sustained. De Laval, of whom more than I 
have told may be found in Mezeray, was not worse than the Land- 
vogt Hugenbach, who makes so terrible a figure in Barante's 
" Dukes of Burgundy." The Landvogt, we are told by the last- 
named historian, cared no more for heaven than he did for any- 
body on earth. He was accustomed to say that being perfectly 
sure of going to the devil, he would take especial care to deny 
himself no gratification that he could possibly desire. There was, 
accordingly, no sort of wild fancy to which he did not surrender 
himself. He was a fiendish corruptor of virtue, employing money, 
menaces, or brutal violence, to accomplish his ends. Neither cot- 
tage nor convent, citizen's hearth nor noble's chateau, was secure 
from Ins invasion and atrocity. He was terribly hated, terribly 
feared — but then Sir Landvogt Hugenbach gave splendid dinners, 
and every family round went to them, while they detested the 
giver. 

He was remarkably facetious on these occasions, sometimes 
ferociously so. For instance, Barante records of him, that at one 
of his pleasant soirees he sent away the husbands into a room 
apart, and kept the wives together in his grand saloon. These, 
he and his myrmidons despoiled entirely of their dresses ; after 
which, having flung a covering over the head of each lady, who 
dared not, for her life, resist, the amiable host called in the hus- 
bands one by one, and bade each select his own wife. If the hus- 
band made a mistake, he was immediately seized and flung head- 
long down the staircase. The Landvogt made no more scruple 
about it than Lord Ernest Yane when he served the Windsor 
manager after something of the same fashion. The husbands who 
guessed rightly were conducted to the sideboard to receive con- 
gratulations, and drink various flasks of wine thereupon. But the 
amount of wine forced upon each unhappy wretch was so immense, 
that in a short time he was as near death as the mangled hus- 
bands, who were lying in a senseless heap at the foot of the stair- 
case. 

They who would like to learn further of this respectable indi- 
vidual, are referred to the pages of Barante. They will find there 
that this knight and servant of the Duke of Burgundy was more 



40 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

like an incarnation of the devil than aught besides. His career 
was frightful for its stupendous cruelty and crime ; but it ended 
on the scaffold, nevertheless. His behavior there was like that 
of a saint who felt a little of the human infirmity of irritability at 
being treated as a very wicked personage by the extremely blind 
justice of men. So edifying was this chivalrous scoundrel, that 
the populace fairly took him for the saint he figured to be ; and 
long after his death, crowds flocked to his tomb to pray for his 
mediation between them and God. 

The rough jokes of the Landvogt remind me of a much greater 
man than he — Gaston de Foix, in whose earlier times there was 
no lack of rough jokes, too. The portrait of Gaston, with his 
page helping to buckle on his armor, by Giorgione da Castel 
Franco, is doubtless known to most of my readers — through the 
engraving, if not the original. It was formerly the property of 
the Duke of Orleans ; but came, many years ago, into the posses- 
sion, by purchase, of Lord Carlisle. The expression of the page 
or young squire who is helping to adjust Gaston's armor is ad- 
mirably rendered. That of the hero gives, perhaps, too old a look 
to a knight who is known to have died young. 

This Gaston was a nephew of Louis XII. His titles were 
Duke of Nemours and Count d'Etampes. He was educated by 
his mother, the sister of King Louis. She exulted in Gaston as 
one who was peculiarly her own work. " Considering," she says, 
" how honor became her son, she was pleased to let him seek dan- 
ger where he was likely to find fame." His career was splendid, 
but proportionally brief. He purchased imperishable renown, and 
a glorious death, in Italy. He gained the victory of Ravenna, 
at the cost of his life ; after which event, fortune abandoned the 
standard of Louis ; and Maximilian Sforza recovered the Milanese 
territories of his father, Ludovic. This was early in the sixteenth 
century. 

But it is of another Gaston de Foix that I have to speak. I 
have given precedence to one bearer of the name, because he was 
the worthier man ; but the earlier hero will afford us better illus- 
trations of the home-life of the noble knights who were sovereigns 
within their own districts. Froissart makes honorable mention of 
him in his " Chronicle." He was Count de Foix, and kept court 



KNIGHTS AT HOME. 41 

at Ortez, in the south of France. There assembled belted knights 
and aspiring 'squires, majestic matrons and dainty damsels. 
When the Count was not on a war-path, his house was a scene of 
great gayety. The jingle of spurs, clash of swords, tramp of iron 
heels, virelays sung by men-at-arms, love-songs hummed by au- 
dacious pages, and romances entoned to the lyre by minstrels who 
were masters in the art — these, with courtly feasts and stately 
dances, made of the castle at Ortez anything but a dull residence. 
Hawking and hunting seem to have been " my very good Erie's" 
favorite diversion. He was not so much master of his passions as 
he was of his retainers ; and few people thought the worse of him 
simply because he murdered his cousin for refusing to betray 
his trust, and cut the throat of the only legitimate son of the 
Earl. 

We may form some idea of the practical jests of those days, 
from an anecdote told by Froissart. Gaston de Foix had com- 
plained, one cold day, of the scanty fire which his retainers kept 
up in the great gallery. Whereupon one of the knights descended 
to the court-yard, where stood several asses laden with wood. One 
of them he seized, wood and ass together, and staggering up-stairs 
into the gallery, flung the whole, the ass heels uppermost, on to 
the fire. " Whereof," says Froissart, " the Earl of Foix had great 
joy, and so had all they that were there, and had marvel of his 
strength, how he alone came up all the stairs with the ass and the 
wood on his neck." 

Gaston was but a lazy knight. It was high noon, Froissart 
tells us, before he rose from his bed. He supped at midnight ; 
and when he issued from his chamber to proceed to the hall where 
supper was laid, twelve torches were carried before him, and 
these were held at his table " by twelve varlets" during the time 
that supper lasted. The Earl sat alone, and none of the knights 
or squires who crowded round the other tables dared to speak a 
word to him unless the great man previously addressed him. The 
supper then must have been a dull affair. 

The treasurer of the Collegiate Church of Chimay relates in a 
very delicate manner how Gaston came to murder his little son. 
Gaston's wife was living apart from her husband, at the court of 
her brother, the King of Navarre, and the " little son" in question 



42 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

was residing there on a visit to his mother. As he was on the 
point of returning, the king of Navarre gave him a powder, which 
he directed the boy to administer to his father, telling him that it 
was a love-powder, and would bring back his father's affection for 
the mother. The innocent boy took the powder, which was in 
fact poison ; and a night or two after his return to Ortez, an ille- 
gitimate son of Gaston found it in the boy's clothes. The base- 
born lad informed against his brother, and when Gaston had given 
the powder to a dog, which immediately died, he could scarcely be 
kept from poniarding his son upon the spot. The poor child 
was flung into a dungeon, where, between terror and despair, he 
refused to take any food. Upon being told of this, the earl en- 
tered the chamber in which the boy was confined, " he had at the 
same time a little knife in his hand, to pare withal his nails .... 
In great displeasure he thrust his hand at his son's throat, and the 
point of his knife a little entered into his throat into a certain vein ; 
and the earl said, ' Ah, traitor, why dost thou not eat thy meat ?' 
and therewith the earl departed without any more doing or saying." 
Never was brutal murder more daintily glozed over, but Froissart 
is so afraid that he may not have sufficiently impressed you with 
a conviction of its being a little accident, that he goes on to say 
" The child was abashed, and afraid of the coming of his father, 
and was also feeble of fasting, and the point of the knife a little 
entered into his throat, into a certain vein of his throat ; and so 
[he] fell down suddenly and died /" 

The rascally sire was as jolly after the deed as before it ; but 
he too one day " fell down suddenly and died." He had over- 
heated himself with hunting, and in that condition bathed in cold 
water as soon as he reached home. The description of the whole 
of this domestic scene is one of the most graphic in Froissart, but 
it is too long for quotation. It must suffice that the vast posses- 
sions of the count fell into the hands of that villanous illegitimate 
son, Sir Jenbayne de Foix. The latter was one of the six knights 
who, with Charles VI., entered a ball-room disguised as satyrs, 
and fast chained together. Some one, who is supposed to have 
owed no good- will to the king, flung a torch into the group. Their 
inflammable dresses immediately caught fire, and Sir Jenbayne de 



KNIGHTS AT HOME. 43 

Foix was one of those who was burned to death. The king him- 
self, as is well known, had a very narrow escape. 

Perhaps one of the chief home pleasures enjoyed by knights 
when not engaged in war, was the pleasure of the chase. Idle 
country gentlemen now resemble their chivalrous ancestors in this 
respect, and for want of or distaste for other vocations, spend three 
fourths of their rural time in the fields. In the old days too, as 
ever, there were clerical gentlemen very much addicted to hunting 
and moreover not less so to trespassing. These were not reverend 
rectors on their own thorough-breds, or curates on borrowed 
ponies, but dignified prelates — even archbishops. One of the 
latter, Edmund, archbishop of Canterbury, in the beginning of the 
thirteenth century, presumed to hunt without permission, on the 
grounds of a young knight, the Earl of Arundel, a minor. On 
the day the Earl came of age, he issued a prohibition against the 
archiepiscopal trespasser, and the latter in return snapped his 
fingers at the earl, and declared that his way was as legally open 
to any chase as it was free into any church. Accordingly, the 
right reverend gentleman issued forth as usual, with hounds and 
horses, and a " numerous meet" of clerical friends and other fol- 
lowers, glad to hunt in such company. Their sport, however, was 
spoiled by the retainers of the young earl. These, in obedience 
to their master's orders, called off the dogs, unstopped the earths, 
warned off the riders, and laughed at the ecclesiastical thunder of 
the prelate, flung at them in open field. Edmund, finding it im- 
possible to overcome the opposition of the men, addressed himself 
to the master, summarily devoting him ad inferos for daring to 
interfere with the prelatic pastimes. Nothing daunted, the young 
earl, who would gladly have permitted the archbishop to hunt in 
his company, whenever so disposed, but who would not allow the 
head of the church in England to act in the woods of Arundel as 
as if he were also lord of the land, made appeal to the only com- 
petent court — that of the Pope. The contending parties went 
over and pleaded their most respective causes personally; the 
earl with calmness, as feeling that he had right on his side ; Ed- 
mund with easy arrogance, springing from a conviction that the 
Pontiff would not give a layman a triumph over a priest. The 
archbishop, however, was mistaken. He not only lost his cause, 



44 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

but he was condemned in the expenses ; and if any one thinks 
that this decree checked him in trespassing, such an idea would 
show that the holder of it knew little of the spirit which moved 
prelates fond of hunting. The archbishop became the most con- 
firmed poacher in the country ; and if he did not spoil the knight's 
sport by riding in advance of the hounds with a red herring, he 
had resort to means as efficacious for marring the pleasures of 
others in the chase. He affected, too, to look down upon the earl 
as one inferior to him in degree, and when they encountered at 
court, the prelate exhibited no more eourtesy toward the gallant 
knight than was manifested by Lord Cowley in Paris toward the 
English Exhibition Commissioners, when the mere men of intellect 
were kept at what the peer thought a proper distance by the mere 
men of rank. 

There is, however, no lack of instances of young knights them- 
selves being brought up in arrogance and wilfulness. This sort 
of education lasted longer, perhaps, in France than elsewhere. 
As late as the last century this instruction prevailed, particularly 
where the pupil was intended for the army. Thus, the rearing 
of the little Vidame d' Amiens affords us an illustration. He was 
awkward and obstinate, but he might have been cured of both 
defects, had his mother been permitted to have some voice in his 
education. She was the last to be consulted, or rather, was never 
consulted at all. The more the little man was arrogant, the more 
delighted were his relatives with such manifestation of his spirit ; 
and one day, when he dealt to his aunt, the Marquise de Belliere 
Plessis, a box of the ear which sent the old lady staggering, her 
only remark was, " My dear, you should never strike me with the 
left hand." The courteous Vidame mortally hated his tutor, and 
expressed such a desire to kill him, that the pedagogue was asked 
to allow the little savage to believe that he had accomplished the 
desired act of homicide. Accordingly, a light musket was placed 
in the boy's hands, from winch the ball had been drawn, unknown 
to him, and with this, coming suddenly upon his instructor, who 
feigned the surprise he did not feel, the Vidame discharged the 
piece full at the breast of his monitor and friend. The servile 
sage pretended to be mortally wounded, and acted death upon the 
polished floor. He was quietly got rid of, and a pension of four 



KNIGHTS AT HOME. 45 

hundred francs, just sixteen pounds a year, rewarded his stupid 
servility. The little chevalier was as proud as Fighting Fitzgerald 
of having, as he supposed, " killed his man." 

Let us return to earlier times for illustrations of the knight at 
home, and also abroad. There is no lack of such illustration in 
the adventures of Fulke Fitzwarren. Fulke was one of the 
outlawed barons of the reign of King John. In his youth, he 
was brought up with the four sons of King Henry ; he was much 
beloved by them all, except John. " It happened that John and 
Fulke were sitting all alone in a chamber playing at chess ; and 
John took the chess-board, and struck Fulke with a great blow. 
Fulke felt himself hurt, raised his foot and struck John in the 
middle of the stomach ; and his head flew against the wall, and he 
became all weak, and fainted. Fulke was in consternation ; but 
he was glad that there was nobody in the chamber but they two, 
and he rubbed John's ears, who recovered from his fainting fit, 
and went to the king his father, and made a great complaint. 
* Hold your tongue, wretch,' said the king, ' you are always quar- 
relling. If Fulke did anything but good to you, it must have 
been by your own desert ;' and he called his master, and made him 
beat him finely and well for complaining. John was much enraged 
against Fulke, so that he could never afterward love him heartily." 

The above, as has been remarked, evinces how little respect 
there was in those early times for royal authority and the doctrine 
of non-resistance. But it may be observed, that even in these 
more polite times, were the heir-apparent to strike a playfellow, 
his royal highness would probably meet in return with as ready- 
handed, if not quite so rough a correction as was inflicted upon 
John. The latter could not forgive a bold companion of his boy- 
hood, as James I. did, in subsequent times, with regard to "Jamie 
Slates." On the contrary, when John became king, he plotted 
with as unscrupulous a person as himself, to deprive Fulke of his 
estate. The conversation between the king and his confederate, 
Moris de Powis, was overheard ; and what came of it is thus told 
in the history of Fulke Fitzwarren, as edited by Thomas Wright 
Esq., for the Warton Club : — 

" There was close by a knight who had heard all the conversa- 
tion between the king and Moris, and he went in haste to Sir 



46 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR HAYS. 

Fulke, and told him that the king was about to confirm by his 
charter, to Sir Moris, the lands to which he had right. Fulke 
and his four brothers came before the king, and prayed that they 
might have the common law and the lands to which they had claim 
and right, as the inheritance of Fulke ; and they prayed that the 
king would receive from them a hundred pounds, on condition that 
he should grant them the award of his court of gain and loss. 
The king told them that what he had granted to Sir Moris, he 
would hold to it whoever might be offended or who not. At length 
Sir Moris spoke to Sir Fulke, and said, ' Sir Knight, you are a 
great fool to challenge my lands ; if you say that you have a right 
to White-Town, you he ; and if we were not in the king's presence 
I would have proved it on your body.' Sir William, Fulke's 
brother, without a word more, sprang forward and struck Sir Moris 
with his fist in the middle of his face, that it became all bloody ; 
knights interfered that no more hurt was done; then said Sir 
Fulke to the king : ' Sir King, you are my liege-lord, and to you 
was I bound by fealty, as long as I was in your service, and as 
long as I held the lands of you ; and you ought to maintain me in 
right, and you fail me in right and common law ; and never was 
he good king who denied his frank tenants law in his court ; where- 
fore I return you your homages :' and with this word, he departed 
from the court and went to his hostel." 

Fulke was most unjustly exiled, but after a while he returned 
to England, wandered about in various disguises, and at length, 
with a ripe project, settled down as a collier or charcoal-burner in 
Windsor Forest. I will once more draw from Mr. Wright's edi- 
tion of this knightly biography for what ensued. 

" At length came the king with three knights, all on foot to 
Fulke, where he was arranging his fire. When Fulke saw the 
king, he knew him well enough, and he cast the fork from his 
hand and saluted Ins lord and went on his knees before him very 
humbly. The king and his three knights had great laughter and 
game at the breeding and bearing of the collier. They stood there 
very long. ' Sir Vilain,' said the king, ' have you seen no stag or 
doe pass here ?' ' Yes, my lord, awhile ago.' ' What beast did 
you see ?' ' Sir, my lord, a horned one ; and it had long horns.' 
* Where is it ?' ' Sir, my lord, I know very well how to lead you 



KNIGHTS AT HOME. 47 

to where I saw it.' ' Onward then, Sir Yilain, and we will follow 
you.' ' Sir/ said the collier, ' shall I take my fork in my hand ? 
for if it were taken I should have thereby a great loss.' ' Yea, 
Vilain, if you will.' Fulke took the great fork of iron in his hand 
and led the king to shoot ; for he had a very handsome bow. 
' Sir, my lord,' said Fulke, ' will you please to wait, and I will go 
into the thicket and make the beast come this way by here?' 
1 Yea,' said the king. Fulke did hastily spring into the thick of 
the forest; and commanded his company hastily to seize upon 
King John, for c I have brought him there only with three knights ; 
and all his company is on the other side of the forest.' Fulke and 
his company leaped out of the thicket, and rushed upon the king 
and seized him at once. ' Sir King,' said Fulke, 'now I have you 
in my power, such judgment I will execute on you as you would 
on me, if you had taken me.' The king trembled with fear for 
he had great dread of Fulke." 

There is here, perhaps, something of the romantic history, but 
with a substantiality of truth. In the end, Fulke, who we are 
told was really one of the barons to whom we owe Magna Charta, 
and who was anathematized by the pope, and driven into exile 
again and again, got the better of all his enemies, pope and king 
included. There are two traditions touching his death. One is, 
that he survived to the period of the battle of Lewes, where he 
was one of a body of Henry the Third's friends who were drowned 
in the adjacent river. The other tells a very different story, and 
is probably nearer the truth. "We are inclined to think with Mr. 
Wright, the editor of the biographical history in question, that he 
who was drowned near Lewes, was the son of Fulke. We add 
the following account, less because of its detail touching the death 
of the old knight than as having reference to how knights lived, 
moved, and had their being, in the period referred to : — 

" Fulke and Lady Clarice his wife, one night, were sleeping 
together in their chamber ; and the lady was asleep, and Fulke 
was awake, and thought of his youth ; and repented much in his 
heart for his trespasses. At length, he saw in the chamber so 
great a light, that it was wonderful; and he thought what could it 
be ? And he heard a voice, as it were, of thunder in the air, and 
it said: — 'Vassal, God has granted thy penance, which is better 



48 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

here than elsewhere.' At that word the lady awoke, and saw the 
great light, and covered her face for fear. At length this light 
vanished. And after this light Fulke could never see more, but 
he was blind all his days. Then Fulke was very hospitable and 
liberal, and he caused the king's road to be turned through his hall 
at his manor of Alleston, in order no stranger might pass without 
having meat or lodging, or other honor or goods of his. This 
Fulke remained seven years blind, and suffered well his penance. 
Lady Clarice died and was buried at the New Abbey ; after whose 
death Fulke lived but a year, and died at the White-town ; and 
in great honor was he interred at the New Abbey — on whose 
soul may God have mercy. Near the altar is the body. God 
have mercy on us all, alive and dead. Amen !" 

The religious sentiment was strong in all Norman knights, but 
not more so, perhaps, than in the wild chivalry of North America, 
when first its painted heroes heard of the passion and death of 
Christ. Charlevoix tells us of an Iroquois, who, on hearing of the 
crucifixion, exclaimed with the feeling of a Christian crusader, 
" Oh, if I had been there !" Precisely such an exclamation was 
once made by a Norman knight, as he listened to a monk narra- 
ting the great sacrifice on Mount Calvary. The more savage 
warrior, however, has always had the more poetical feeling. Wit- 
ness the dying request of a young Indian chief, also noticed by 
Charlevoix. The dying victor asked to be buried in a blue robe, 
because that was the color of the sky : the fashion, with many 
Norman knights, of being interred in a robe and cowl of a monk, 
had far less of elevated feeling for its motive. 

Having shown something of what the knight did at home, let us 
contemplate also what he taught there, by precept, if not by ex- 
ample. There was a knight who was known by the title of " the 
White Knight," whose name was De la Tour Landay, who was a 
contemporary of Edward the Black Prince, and who is supposed 
to have fought at Poictiers. He, is, however, best known, or at 
least equally well known, as the author of a work entitled " Le 
Livre du Chevalier de la Tour Landay." This book was written, 
or dictated by him, for the especial benefit of his two daughters, 
and for the guidance of young ladies generally. It is extremely in- 
delicate in parts, and in such wise gives no very favorable idea of the 



KNIGHTS AT HOME. 49 

young ladies who could bear sucli instruction as is here imparted. 
The Chevalier performed his authorship after a very free and easy- 
fashion. He engaged four clerical gentlemen, strictly designated 
as u two priests and two clerks," whose task it was to procure for 
him all the necessary illustrative materials, such as anecdotes, 
apophthegms, and such like. These were collected from all 
sources, sacred and profane — from the Bible down to any volume, 
legendary or historical, that would suit his purpose. These he 
worked mosaically together, adding such wise saw, moral, counsel, 
or sentiment, as he deemed the case most especially required; — 
with a sprinkling of stories of his own collecting. A critic in the 
"Athenaeum," commenting upon this curious volume, says with 
great truth, that it affords good materials for an examination into 
the morals and manners of the times. " Nothing," says the re- 
viewer, " is urged for adoption upon the sensible grounds of right 
or wrong, or as being in accordance with any admitted moral 
standard, but because it has been sanctified by long usage, been 
confirmed by pretended miracle, or been approved by some super- 
stition which outrages common sense." 

In illustration of these remarks it is shown how the Chevalier 
recommends a strict observation of the meagre days, upon the 
ground that the dissevered head of a soldier was once enabled to 
call for a priest, confess, and listen to the absolution, because the 
owner of the head had never transgressed the Wednesday and 
Friday's fasts throughout his lifetime. Avoidance of the seven 
capital sins is enjoined upon much the same grounds. Gluttony, 
for instance, is to be avoided, for the good reason, that a prattling 
magpie once betrayed a lady who had eaten a dish of eels, which 
her lord had intended for some guests whom he wished particularly 
to honor. Charity is enjoined, not because the practice thereof is 
placed by the great teacher, not merely above Hope, but before 
Faith, but because a lady who, in spite of priestly warning, gave 
the broken victuals of her household to her dogs rather than to 
the poor, being on her death-bed, was leaped upon by a couple of 
black dogs, and that these having approached her lips, the latter 
became as black as a coal. The knight the more insists upon 
the proper exercise of charity, seeing that he has unquestionable 
authority in support of the truth of the story. That is, he knew 

4 



50 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

a lady that had known the defunct, and who said she had seen the 
dogs. Implicit obedience of wives to husbands is insisted on, with 
a forcibly illustrative argument. A burgher's wife had answered 
her lord sharply, in place of silently listening to reproof, and 
meekly obeying his command. The husband, thereupon, dealt his 
wife a blow with his clenched fist, which smashed her nose, and 
felled her to the ground. " It is reason and right," says the mailed 
Mrs. Ellis of his time, " that the husband should have the word of 
command, and it is an honor to the good wife to hear him, and 
hold her peace, and leave all high talking to her lord ; and so, on 
the contrary, it is a great shame to hear a woman strive with her 
husband, ichether right or wrong, and especially before other peo- 
ple." Publius Syrus says, that a good wife commands by obey- 
ing, but the Chevalier evidently had no idea of illustrating the 
Latin maxim, or recommending the end which it contemplates. 
The knight places the husband as absolute lord ; and his doing so, 
in conjunction with the servility which he demands on the part of 
the wife, reminds me of the saying of Toulotte, which is as true as 
anything enjoined by the moralizing knight, namely, that " L'obeis- 
sance aux volontes oVwi chef absolu assimile Vhomme a la brute." 
This, with a verbal alteration, may be applied as expressive of 
the effect of the knight's teaching in the matter of feminine obe- 
dience. The latter is indeed in consonance with the old heathen 
ideas. Euripides asserts, that the most intolerable wife in the 
world is a wife who philosophizes, or supports her own opinion. 
"We are astonished to find a Christian knight thus agreed with a 
heathen poet — particularly as it was in Christian times that the 
maxim was first published, which says, " Ce que femme vent, Dieu 
le veut /" 

This sentiment reminds me, that it is time to show how the 
knight was affected by the tender passion, how it was sometimes 
his glory and sometimes his shame. He was sometimes the vic- 
tim, and at others the victimizer. 



LOVE IN CHEVALIERS, AND CHEVALIERS IN LOVE. 51 



LOVE IN CHEVALIERS, AND CHEVALIERS IN 
LOVE. 

" How pleasing are the steps we lovers make, 
When in the paths of our content we pace 
To meet our longings !" — The Hog hath Lost his Purse. 

Butler, in his Hudibras (part iii. cant. 1), has amusingly* illus- 
trated the feeling which moved knights-errant, and the particular 
object they had in view : " the ancient errant knights," he says : — 

" Won all their ladies' hearts in fights, 
And cuts whole giants into fritters, 
To put them into amorous twitters ; 
Whose stubborn bowels scorned to yield, 
Until their gallants were half killed : 
But Avhen their bones were drubbed so sore 
They durst not win one combat more, 
The ladies' hearts began to melt, 
Subdued by blows their lovers felt. 
So Spanish heroes with their lances 
At once wound bulls and ladies' fancies." 

However willing a knight may have been to do homage to his 
lady, the latter, if she truly regarded the knight, never allowed his 
homage to her to be paid at the cost of injury to his country's honor 
or his own. An instance of this is afforded us in the case of Ber- 
trand de Guesclin. There never was man who struck harder 
blows when he was a bachelor; but when he went a wooing, and 
still more after he had wed the incomparable Tiphania, he lost all 
care for honor in the field, and had no delight but in the society 
of his spouse. The lady, however, was resolved that neither his 
sword nor his reputation should acquire rust through any fault or 
beauty of hers. She rallied him soundly on his home-keeping 
propensities, set them in contrast with the activity of his bachelor- 



52 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

days, and the renown acquired by it, and forthwith talked him out 
of her bower and into his saddle. 

The English did not profit by the lady's eloquence, for our fore- 
fathers never had a more gallant or more difficult adversary to 
deal with than Bertrand. Living, his name was a terror to them ; 
and dying, he had the sympathy of those who had been his foes. 
Charles V. made him Constable of France, and appointed him a 
grave at the foot of his own royal tomb. De Guesclin would never 
have been half the man he was but for the good sense of his wife 
Tiphania. 

There are many instances in romance which would seem to im- 
ply, that so strained was the sentiment which bound knights to re- 
spect ladies, it compelled them not to depart therefrom even in 
extreme cases, involving lightness of conduct and infidelity. The 
great northern chiefs, who were a sort of very rough knights in 
their way, were, however, completely under the distaff. Their 
wives could divorce themselves at will. Thus, in Erysbiggia Saga 
we read of Borck, an Icelandic chief, who, bringing home a guest 
whom his wife not only refused to welcome, but attempted to stab, 
administered such correction to his spouse in return, that the lady 
called in witnesses and divorced herself on the spot. Thereupon 
the household goods were divided among them, and the affair was 
rapidly and cheaply managed without the intervention of an Eccle- 
siastical Court. More modern chivalry would not have tolerated 
the idea of correcting even a faithless, much less a merely angry 
spouse. Indeed, the amatory principle was quite as strong as the 
religious one ; and in illustration thereof, it has been remarked 
that the knight must have been more than ordinarily devout who 
had God on his right hand (the place of honor), and his lady on 
his left. 

To ride at the ring was then the pleasantest pastime for knights ; 
and ladies looked on and applauded the success, or laughed at the 
failures. The riding, without attempting to carry off the ring, is 
still common enough at our fairs, for children ; but in France and 
Germany, it is seriously practised in both its simple and double 
forms, by persons of all ages, who glide round to the grinding of 
an organ, and look as grave as if they were on desperate business. 

It is an undoubted matter of fact, that although a knight was 



LOVE IN CHEVALIERS, AND CHEVALIERS IN LOVE. 53 

bound to be tender in his gallantry, there were some to be found 
whose wooing was of the very roughest ; and there were others 
who, if not rough, were rascally. 

The old Rue des Lombards, in Paris, was at one time occupied 
exclusively by the "professed pourpoint : makers," as a modern 
tailor might say. They carried on a flourishing trade, especially 
in times when men, like Bassompierre, thought nothing of paying, 
or promising to pay, fourteen thousand crowns for a pourpoint. 
When I say the street was thus occupied exclusively, I must no- 
tice an exception. There were a few other residents in it, the 
Jew money-lenders or usurers ; and when I hear the old French 
proverb cited " patient as a Lombard," I do not know whether it 
originally applied to the tailors or the money-lenders, both of whom 
were extensively cheated by their knightly customers. Here is an 
illustration of it, showing that all Jessicas have not been as lucky 
as Shylock's daughter, and that some Jews have been more cruelly 
treated than Shylock's daughter's father — whom I have always 
considered as one of the most ill-used of men. 

In the Rue des Lombards there dwelt a wealthy Jew, who put 
his money out at interest, and kept his daughter under lock and 
key at home. But the paternal Jew did not close his shutters, 
and the Lombard street Jessica, sitting all day at the window, at- 
tracted the homage of many passers-by. These were chiefly 
knights who came that way to be. measured for pourpoints ; and 
no knight was more attracted by the black eyes of the young lady 
in question, than the Chevalier Giles de Pontoise. That name 
indeed is one of a celebrated hero of a burlesque tragedy, but the 
original knight was " my Beverley." 

Giles wore the showiest pourpoint in the world ; for which he 
had obtained long credit. It struck him that he would call upon 
the Jew to borrow a few hundred pistoles, and take the opportu- 
nity to also borrow the daughter. He felt sure of succeeding in 
both exploits ; for, as he remarked, if he could not pay the money 
he was about to borrow, he could borrow it of his more prudent 
relatives, and so acquit himself of his debt. With regard to the , 
lady, he had serenaded her, night after night, till she looked as 
ready to leap down to him as the Juliets who played to Barry's 
Romeo; — and he had sung " Ecco ridente il sole." or what was 



54 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

then equivalent to it, accompanied by his guitar, and looking as 
ridiculous the while, without being half so silvery-toned as Rubini 
in Almaviva, warbling his delicious nonsense to Eosina. Our Jew, 
like old Bartolo, was destined to pay the musician. 

Giles succeeded in extracting the money required from the 
usurer, and he had like success in inducing the daughter to trust 
to his promises. He took the latter to Pontoise, deceived her by 
a mock-marriage, and spent all that he had borrowed from the 
father, in celebrating his pretended nuptials with the daughter. 
There never was a more recreant knight than Giles de Pontoise. 

However, bills will become due, if noble or simple put their 
names to them, and the Jew claimed at once both his debt and his 
daughter. He failed in obtaining his money, but the lady he car- 
ried off by violence, she herself exhibiting considerable reluctance 
to leave the Chateau de Pontoise for the paternal dungeon in the 
Rue des Lombards. 

This step brought Giles to a course of reflection. It was not 
of that quality which his confessor would have recommended, but 
rather of a satanic aspect. " In the usurer's house," thought Giles, 
" live the tailor to whom I am indebted for my pourpoint, the Jew 
who holds my promise to pay, and the pretty daughter of whom I 
have been so unjustly deprived. I will set fire to the house. If 
I burn tailor, money-lender, and the proofs of my liabilities, I shall 
have done a good night's work, if I therewith can carry off little 
Jessica." 

Thereupon, Giles went down to the Rue des Lombards, and 
with such aid as was then easily purchasable, he soon wrapped 
the Jew's dwelling in flames. Shylock looked to his papers and 
money-bags. The knight groped through the smoke and carried 
off the daughter. The Jew still held the promissory note of the 
Knight of Pontoise, whose incendiary act, however, had destroyed 
half of- one side of the Rue des Lombards. Therewith had per- 
ished reams of bonds which made slaves of chevaliers to Jew 
money-lenders. "Sic vos non vobis," thought Giles, " but at all 
events, if he has my bill, I have possession of Jessica." 

The Jew held as much to his daughter as to his ducats. He 
persecuted the pretended husband with a pertinacity which event- 
ually overcame Giles de Pontoise. A compromise was effected. 



LOVE IN CHEVALIERS, AND CHEVALIERS IN LOVE. 55 

The knight owed the usurer three thousand golden crowns, and 
had stolen from him his only daughter. Giles agreed to surrender 
his " lady," on condition that the money-lender should sign an ac- 
quittance of the debt. This done, the Jew and daughter walked 
homeward, neither of them well satisfied with the result of their 
dealings with a knight. 

The burnt-out Lombarder turned round at the threshold of the 
knight's door, with a withering sneer, like Edmund Kean's in 
Shylock when he was told to make haste and go home, and begin 
to be a Christian. " It is little but sorrow I get by you, at all 
events," said the Jew to the Chevalier. 

" Do you make so light of your grandson ?" asked Giles. And 
with this Parthian dart he shut his door hi the face of the trio 
who were his victims. 

This knight was a victimizer ; but below we have an illustration 
of knights victimized through too daring affection. 

The great Karloman may be said to have been one of those 
crowned knights who really had very little of the spirit of chivalry 
in him, with respect to ladies. He married, successfully, two 
wives, but to neither did he allow the title of Empress. It is, 
however, not with his two wives, but his two daughters and their 
chevaliers -par amours, with whom we have now to do. 

In the Rue de la Harpe, in Paris, may be seen the remains, 
rather than the ruins, of the old building erected by the Emperor 
Julian, and which was long known by the name of the " old pal- 
ace." It served as a palace about a thousand years and half a 
century ago, when one night there drew up before it a couple of 
knights, admirably mounted, and rather roughly escorted by a 
mob, who held up their lanterns to examine the riders, and han- 
dled their pikes as if they were more ready to massacre the knights 
than to marshal them. 

All the civility they received on this February night was of a 
highly equivocal nature. They were admitted, indeed, into the 
first and largest court of the palace, but the old seneschal locked 
and barred the gate behind them. An officer too approached to 
bid them welcome, but he had hardly acquitted himself of his civil 
mission when he peremptorily demanded of them the surrender of 
their swords. 



56 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

" We are the King's own messengers," said one of the knights, 
rather puzzled at the reception vouchsafed to them ; — " and we 
have, moreover, a despatch to deliver, written in our gracious mas- 
ter's own hand," remarked the second knight. 

" Vive Louis le Debonnaire !" exclaimed the seneschal ; " how 
fares it with our sovereign ?" 

" As well as can be," was the reply, " with a monarch who has 
been engaged six whole weeks at Aix, in burying his father and 
predecessor, Charlemagne. Here is his missive." This missive 
was from Louis the Frolicsome, or Louis the Good-Natured, or 
Louis of Fair Aspect. He was morose, wittily disposed, and ill- 
featured; — but then the poet-laureate had given him his fine 
name ; and the king wore it as if it had been fairly won. He had 
clipped, shaved, and frocked, all his natural brothers, and then 
shut them up in monasteries. He had no more respect for treat- 
ies than he had for Mohammed, and by personal example he 
taught perjury and rebellion to those whom he cruelly punished 
when they imitated their exalted instructor. The seneschal pe- 
rused the letter addressed to him by his royal correspondent, 
and immediately requested the two knights to enter the palace 
itself. 

They were ushered into a lofty-arched apartment on the ground 
floor, which ordinarily served as an ante-room for the guards on 
duty ; it was for the moment, however, empty. They who have 
visited the old Palais de Thermes, as it is called, have, doubtlessly, 
remarked and admired this solid relic of the past. 

After entering, the seneschal once more lifted the despatch to 
the flambeau, read it through, looked at the seal, then at the 
knights, coughed uneasily, and began to wear an air of dislike for 
some duty imposed upon him. He repeated, as if he were learn- 
ing by rote, the names Raoul de Lys and Robert de Quercy. 
" Those are our names," observed the first ; " we have ridden hith- 
er by the king's orders to announce his coming ; and having done 
so, let us have fire and food, lest we be famished and frozen before 
he arrives." 

" Hem !" muttered the seneschal, " I am extremely sorry ; but, 
according to this letter, you are my prisoners, and till to-morrow 
you must remain in this apartment ;" and, seeing them about to 



LOVE IN CHEVALIERS, AND CHEVALIERS IN LOVE. 57 

remonstrate, he added, " You will be quite at liberty here, except, 
of course, that you cant't get out ; you will have separate quarters 
to-morrow." 

It was in vain that they inquired the reason for their detention, 
the nature of the charge alleged against them, or what they had 
further to expect. The seneschal dryly referred them to the mon- 
arch. He himself knew nothing more than his orders, and by 
them he was instructed to keep the two friends in close confine- 
ment till the sovereign's arrival. " On second thoughts," said the 
seneschal, " I must separate you at once. There is the bell in the 
tower of St. Jacques ringing midnight, and to-morrow will be upon 
us, before its iron tongue has done wagging. I really must trouble 
one of you gentlemen to follow me." The voice was not so civil 
as the words, and after much parleying and reluctance, the two 
friends parted. Robert bade Raoul be of good cheer ; and Raoul, 
who was left behind, whispered that it would be hard, indeed, if 
harm was to come to them under such a roof. 

The roof, however, of this royal palace, looked very much like 
the covering of a place in which very much harm might be very 
quietly effected. But there were dwelling there two beings who 
might have been taken for spirits of good, so winning, so natural, 
and so loveable were the two spirits in question. They were no 
other than the two daughters of Charlemagne, Gisla and Rotrude. 
The romancers, who talk such an infinite deal of nonsense, say of 
them that their sweet-scented beauty was protected by the prickles 
of principle. The most rapid of analysers may see at once that 
this was no great compliment to the ladies. It was meant, how- 
ever, to be the most refined flattery ; and the will was accepted for 
the deed. 

Now, the two knights loved the two ladies, and if they had not, 
neither Father Daniel nor Sainte Foix could have alluded to their 
amorous history; nor Father Pasquale, of the Convent of the 
Arminians in Venice, have touched it up with some of the hues 
of romance, nor Roger de Beauvoir have woven the two together, 
nor unworthy segomet have applied it to the illustration of daring 
lovers. 

These two girls were marvellously high-spirited. They had 



58 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

been wooed by emperors ; but feeling no inclination to answer 
favorably to the wooing, Charlemagne generously refused to put 
force upon their affections, and bade them love only where their 
hearts directed them. This " license" gave courage to numberless 
nobles of various degrees, but Rotrude and Gisla said nay to all 
their regular advances. The Princesses were, in fact, something 
like Miss Languish, thought love worth nothing without a little 
excitement, and would have considered elopement as the proper 
preceder of the nuptial ceremony. Their mother, Hildegarda, 
was an unexceptional woman, but, like good Queen Charlotte, who 
let her daughters read Polly Honeycombe as well as Hannah 
More, she was a little confused in the way she taught morals, and 
the young Princesses fell in love, at the first opportunity, with 
gallant gentlemen of — as compared with princesses — rather low 
degree. In this respect, there is a parallel between the house of 
Karloman and some other houses of more modern times. 

Louis le Debonnaire had, as disagreeable brothers will have, 
an impertinent curiosity respecting his sisters' affairs. He was, 
here, the head of his family, and deemed himself as divinely em- 
powered to dispose of the hearts of these ladies, as of the families 
and fortunes of his people. He had learned the love-passages 
that had been going on, and he had hinted that when he reached 
the old palace in Paris, he would make it as calmly cold as a 
cloister, and that there were disturbed hearts there, which should 
be speedily restored to a lasting tranquillity. The young ladies 
did not trouble themselves to read the riddle of a brother who was 
for ever affecting much mystery. But they prepared to welcome 
his arrival, and seemed more than ordinarily delighted when they 
knew that intelligence of his approaching coming had been brought 
by the two knights then in the castle. 

Meanwhile, Raoul de Lys sat shivering on a stone bench in the 
great guard-room. He subsequently addressed himself to a scanty 
portion of skinny wild boar, very ill-cooked ; drank, with intense 
disgust, part of a flask of hydromel of the very worst quality ; and 
then having gazed on the miniature of Rotrude, which he took 
from beneath the buff jerkin under his corslet, he apostrophized it 
till he grew sleepy, upon which he blew out his lamp, and threw 
himself on an execrably hard couch. He was surprised to find 



LOVE IN CHEVALIERS, AND CHEVALIERS IN LOVE. 59 

that he was not in the dark. There was very good reason for 
the contrary. 

As he blew out his lamp, a panel in the stone wall glided noise- 
lessly open, and Robert de Quercy appeared upon the threshold — 
one hand holding a lamp, the other leading a lady. The lady was 
veiled ; and she and the knight hurriedly approached Raoul, who 
as hurriedly rushed forward to meet them. He had laid his armor 
by ; and they who recollect Mr. Young in Hotspur, and how he 
looked in tight buff suit, before he put his armor on, may have 
some idea of the rather ridiculous guise in which Raoul appeared 
to the lady. But she was used to such sights, and had not time 
to remark it even had she not been so accustomed. 

Raoul observing that Robert was accompanied only by Gisla, 
made anxious inquiry for Rotrude. Gisla in a few words told 
him that her sister would speedily be with them, that there was 
certain danger, even death, threatening the two cavaliers, and 
probable peril menacing — as Gisla remarked, with a blush — those 
who loved them. The King, she added, had spoken angrily of 
coming to purify the palace, as she had heard from Count Volrade, 
who appears to have been a Polonius, as regards his office, with 
all the gossip, but none of the good sense, of the old chamberlain 
in Denmark. 

" Death to us !" exclaimed Robert. " Accursed be the prince 
who transgresses the Gospel admonition, not to forget his own or 
his father's friends." " "We were the favored servants of Charle- 
magne," said Raoul. " We were of his closest intimacy," exclaim- 
ed Robert. "Never," interrupted Raoul, "did he ascend his 
turret to watch the stars, without summoning us, his nocturnal 
pages, as he called us, to his side." " He dare not commit such a 
crime ; for the body of Charlemagne is scarcely sealed down in 
its tomb ; and Louis has not a month's hold of the sceptre." 

" He holds it firmly enough, however, to punish villany," ex- 
claimed Louis himself, as he appeared in the doorway leading to 
a flight of stone stairs by which Gisla had indicated the speedy 
appearance of Rotrude. 

And here I would beseech my readers to believe that if the 
word " tableau !" ought to be written at this situation, and if it ap- 
pears to them to be too melo-dramatic to be natural. I am not in 



60 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

fault. I refer them to all the histories and romances in which 
this episode in knightly story is told, and in all they will find that 
Louis makes his appearance exactly as I have described, and pre- 
cisely like Signor Tamburini in the great scene of Lucrezia Borgia. 

Louis having given expression to his startling bit of recitative, 
dragged forward Rotrude, whom he had held behind him, by the 
wrist. The background was occupied by four guards, wearing 
hoods ; and I can not think of them without being reminded of 
those same four old guards, with M. Desmousseaux at their head, 
who always represented the Greek or Roman armies upon the 
stage of the Theatre Francais, when Talma was the Nero or the 
Sylla, the Orestes or the Capitolinus of the night. 

With some allusion to Rotrude as a sacred dove, and to himself 
as a bird-catcher, Louis handed his sister to a stone bench, and 
then grew good-natured in his remarks. This sudden benevolence 
gave a chill to the entire company. They turned as pale as any 
Russian nobleman to whom Nicholas was extraordinarily civil. 

" We know the winding passages of the palace of Thermes," 
said Louis, laughingly, " as well as our sisters ; and I have not 
gone through them to-night for the purpose of terrifying the sister 
whom I encountered there, or the other sister whom I see here. 
I am a kind-hearted brother, and am marvellously well-disposed. 
I need only appeal to these four gentlemen of my guard, who will 
presently take off their hoods, and serve as witnesses this night in 
a little ceremony having reference to my dear Rotrude." 

" A ceremony ! this night !" exclaimed the two princesses. 

" Ay, by the nails of the cross ! Two ceremonies. You shall 
both be married forthwith. I will inaugurate my reign by a double 
wedding, here in the old palace of Thermes. You, Gisla, shall 
espouse Robert, Count cle Quercy, and you, Rotrude, shall wed 
with Raoul, Baron de Lys. You might have aimed higher, 
but they are gallant gentlemen, friends of my deceased sire ; and, 
by my sooth, the nuptials shall not lack state and ceremony! 
Here are our wedding-gifts to the bridegrooms." 

He pointed to two showy suits of armor, the pieces of which were 
carried by the four guards. The knights were in a dream of delight. 
They vowed eternal gratitude to the most noble of emperors and 
unparalleled of brothers. 



LOVE IN CHEVALIERS, AND CHEVALIERS IN LOVE. 61 

'•» 

" We have no great faith in human gratitude," said Louis, " and 
shall not expect from you more than is due. And you, my sis- 
ters," added he, " retire for awhile ; put on what you will ; but do 
not tarry here at the toilette of men-at-arms, like peasant-girls 
looking at the equipping of two pikemen." 

The two princesses withdrew ; and there would have been a 
smile upon their lips, only that they suspected their brother. 
Hoping the best, however, they kissed the tips of their rosy fingers 
to the knights, and tripped away, like two pets of the ballet. They 
were true daughters of their sire, who reckoned love-passages as 
even superior to stricken fields. He was not an exemplary father, 
nor a faithful husband. His entourage was not of the most re- 
spectable ; and in some of his journeys he was attended by the 
young wife of one of his own cavaliers, clad in cavalier costume. 
It was a villanously reprobate action, not the less so that Hermen- 
garde was living. The mention of it will disgust every monarch 
in Europe who reads my volume ; and I am sure that it will pro- 
duce no such strong sensation of reproof anywhere as in the bosom 
of an admirable personage " over the water." 

The two princesses, then, had not so much trouble from the 
prickles of principle as the romances told of them. But, consid- 
ering the example set them by their imperial father, they were 
really very tolerable princesses, under the circumstances. 
" Don your suits, gentlemen !" exclaimed the king. 
The four guards advanced with the separate pieces of armor, 
at which the two knights gazed curiously for a moment or two, 
as two foxes might at a trap in which lay a much-desired felicity. 
They were greatly delighted, yet half afraid. The monarch grew 
impatient, and the knights addressed themselves at once to their 
adornment. They put aside their own armor, and with the assist- 
ance of the four mute gentlemen-at-arms they fitted on the brassards 
or arm-pieces, winch became them as though the first Milainer 
who ever dressed knight had taken their measure. With some 
little trouble they were accoutred, less as became bridegrooms than 
barons going to battle ; and this done, they took their seats, at a 
sign from the king, who bade the four gentlemen come to an end 
with what remained of the toilette. 

The knights submitted, not without some misgiving, to the ser- 



62 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIK DAYS. 

vices of the four mysterious valets! and, in a short time, the 
preparations were complete, even to the helmet with the closed 
visor. This done, the knights took their places, or were led rather 
to two high-backed oaken chairs. As soon as they were seated 
there, the four too-officious attendants applied their hands to the 
closed head-pieces ; and in a very brief space the heads of the 
cavaliers sunk gently upon their breasts, as if they were in deep 
slumber or as deep meditation. 

Two o'clock rang out from the belfry of St. Jacques, as the two 
brides entered. The king pointed with a smile to the bridegrooms, 
and left the apartment with his attendants. The ladies thought 
that the lovers exhibited little ardor or anxiety to meet them ; for 
they remained motionless on their oaken chairs. The daughters 
of Charlemagne advanced, half-timidly, half-playfully ; and, at 
length, finding the knights not disposed to address them, gently 
called to each by Ms name. Raoul and Robert continued motion- 
less and mute. They were in fact dead. They had been strangled 
or suffocated in a peculiar sort of armor, which had been sent to 
Charlemagne from Ravenna, in return for a jewelled vase pre- 
sented by that emperor to the ancient city. " In 1560," says Mon- 
sieur Roger de Beauvoir, himself quoting an Italian manuscript, 
there were several researches made in this part of the palace of 
Thermes, one result of which was the discovery of a ' casque a 
souffiet,' all the openings in which could be closed in an instant 
by a simple pressure of the finger on a spring. At the same 
instant the lower part of the neck-piece tightened round the 
throat, and the patient was disposed of. In this helmet," adds the 
author, " was found the head of a man, well preserved, with beard 
and teeth admirable for their beauty." I think, however, that in 
this matter M. de Beauvoir proves a little too much. 

Father Daniel, in his history notices the vengeance of Louis le 
Debonnaire against two young nobles who were, reputedly, the 
lovers of Gisla and Rotrude. The details of the act of vengeance 
have been- derived from an Italian source ; and it is said that an 
Italian monk, named Pagnola, had some prominent part in this 
dreary drama, impelled thereto by a blow dealt to him at the hands 
of Raoul, by way of punishment for some contemptuous phrases 
which the monk had presumed to apply to the great Charlemagne. 



LOVE IN CHEVALIERS, AND CHEVALIERS IN LOVE. 63 

Love and sword-blades seem to have been as closely connected 
as " Trousseaux et Layettes," which are always named together 
in the shop-fronts of a Parisian " Lingere." There was once an 
ample field for the accommodation of both the sentiments of love 
and bravery in the old Chaussee d'Antin, when it was merely a 
chaussee or highway, and not the magnificent street it now is. It 
was, down even to comparatively modern times, the resort of lovers 
of every degree, from dukes and duchesses to common dragoons 
and dairymaids. They were not always, however, under this 
strict classification. 

But whatever classification or want of it there may have been, 
there was a part of the road which was constantly the scene of 
bloody encounters. This was at the narrow bridge of Arcans. 
Here if two cavaliers met, each with a lady at his side, it was a 
matter of honor not to give way. On the contrary, the latter was 
to be forced at the point of the sword. While the champions were 
contending, the ladies would scarcely affect to faint ; they would 
stand aside, remain unconcerned on their jennets or mules, till the 
two simpletons had pinked one another ; or lounge in their cum- 
brous coaches till the lovers limped back to them. 

It was on this bridge, of which no vestige now remains, not 
even in a museum, that the Count de Fiesque one evening escort- 
ing Madame de Lionne, encountered M. de Tallard, who was cha- 
peroning Louison d'Arquien. Each couple was in a carriage, 
and neither would make way for the other to pass. Thereupon 
the two cavaliers leaped from their coaches, drew their swords, 
planted their feet firmly on the ground, and began slashing at each 
other like two madmen, to the great delight of a large crowd who 
enjoyed nothing so much as the sight of two noble gentlemen cut- 
ting one another's throats. 

The ladies, meanwhile, flourished their handkerchiefs from their 
respective carriage-windows, for the encouragement of their cham- 
pions. Now and then each laughed aloud when her particular 
friend had made a more than ordinary successful thrust ; and each 
was generous enough to applaud any especial dexterity, even when 
her own lover thereby bloodily suffered. The two foolish fellows 
only poked at each other with the more intensity. And when 
they had sufficiently slit their pourpoints and slashed their sleeves, 



64 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

the ladies, weary of waiting any longer for a more exciting de- 
nouement, rushed between the combatants, like the Sabine ladies 
between the contending hosts; each gentleman gallantly kissed 
the lady who did not belong to him ; and the whole four gayly 
supped together, as though they had been the best friends in the 
world. 

This incident fairly brings us to the questions of duelling and 
death, as illustrated by chivalry. 



65 



DUELLING, DEATH AND BURIAL. 

" Le duel, ma mie, ne vaut pas un duo, de Lully." 

Crispin Mourant. 

As an effect of chivalry, duelling deserves some passing notice. 
Its modern practice was but an imitation of chivalric encounters, 
wherein the issue of battle was left to the judgment of God. 

Bassompierre dates the origin of duelling (in France) from the 
period of Henri II. Previous to that king's reign, the quarrels 
of gentlemen were determined by the decree of the constable and 
marshals of France. These only allowed knightly encounters in 
the lists, when they could not of themselves decide upon the rela- 
tive justice and merits of the dispute. 

" I esteem him no gentleman," said Henri one day, " who has 
the lie given him, and who does not chastise the giver." It was 
a remark lightly dropped, but it did not fall unheeded. The king 
in fact encouraged those who resorted, of their own will, to a 
bloody arbitrament of their dissensions ; and duelling became so 
" fashionable," that even the penalty of death levelled against those 
who practised it, was hardly effectual enough to check duellists. 
At the close of the reign of Henri IV. and the commencement of 
that of Louis XIII. the practice was in least activity ; but after the 
latter period, as the law was not rigorously applied, the foolish 
usage was again revived ; and sanguinary simpletons washed out 
their folly in blood. 

But duelling has a more remote origin than that ascribed to it 
by Bassompierre. Sabine, in his " Dictionary of Duelling," a re- 
cently-published American work, dates its rise from the challenge 
of the Philistine accepted by David ! However this may be, it is 
a strange anomaly that an advocate for the savage and sinful habit 
of duelling has appeared in that France which claims to be the 

5 



66 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

leader of civilization. Jules Janin has, among his numberless 
feuilletons published three reasons authorizing men to appeal to 
single combat. The above M. Janin divides the world into three 
parts — a world of cravens ; a world in which opinion is every- 
thing ; and a world of hypocrites and calumniators. He considers 
the man who has not the heart to risk his life in a duel, as one 
lost in the world of cravens, because the legion of cowards by 
whom he is surrounded will assume courage at his expense. 

Further, according to our gay neighbor's reasoning, the man is 
lost in this world, in which opinion is everything, who will not 
seek to obtain a good opinion at the sword's point. 

Again, says M. Janin, the man is lost in this world of hypo- 
crites and calumniators who will not demand reparation, sword in 
hand, for the calumnies and malicious reports to which he has been 
exposed. It would be insulting to the common sense of my read- 
ers to affect to point out to them the rottenness of reasons like 
these. They could only convince such men as Buckingham and 
Alfieri, and others in circumstances like theirs ; Buckingham after 
killing Lord Shrewsbury at Barnes, and pressing the head of 
Lady Shrewsbury on his bloody shirt ; and Alfieri, who, after a 
vile seduction, and very nearly a terrible murder in defence of it, 
went home and slept more peacefully than he had ever slept 
before : " dopo tanto e si stranie peripizie d'un sol giorno, non ho 
dormito mai d'un sonno piu tenace e piu dolce." Alfieri would 
have agreed with M. Janin, that in duelling lay the safeguard of 
all that remains to us of civilization. But how comes it then that 
civilization is thus a wreck, since duelling has been so long exer- 
cising a protective influence over it? 

However few, though dazzling, were the virtues possessed by 
the chivalrous heroes of ancient history, it must be conceded to 
them, that they possessed that of valor, or a disregard of life, in 
an eminent degree. The instances of cowardice are so rare that 
they prove the general rule of courage ; yet these men, with no 
guides but a spurious divinity and a false philosophy, never dream- 
ed of having recourse to the duel, as a means of avenging a pri- 
vate wrong. Marius, indeed, was once challenged, but it was by 
a semi-barbarous Teutonic chief, whom the haughty Roman rec- 
ommended, if he were weary of his life to go and hang himself. 



DEATH AND BURIAL. 67 

Themistocles, too, whose wisdom and courage the most successful 
of our modern gladiators may admire and envy, when Eurybiades 
threatened to give him a blow, exclaimed, " Strike, but hear me !" 
Themistocles, it must be remembered, was a man of undaunted 
courage, while his jealous provoker was notorious for little else but 
his extreme cowardice. 

But, in truth, there have been brave men in all countries, who 
have discouraged this barbarous practice. A Turkish pacha re- 
minded a man who had challenged a fellow Spahi, that they had 
no right to slay one another while there were foes to subdue. The 
Dauphin of Yiennois told the Count of Savoy, who had challenged 
him, that he would send the count one of his fiercest bulls, and 
that if the count were so minded, his lordship of Savoy might test 
his prowess against an antagonist difficult to overcome. The great 
Frederick would not tolerate the practice of duelling in his army; 
and he thoroughly despised the arguments used for its justification. 
A greater man than Frederick, Turenne, would never allow him- 
self to be what was called " concerned in an affair of honor/' 
Once, when the hero of Sintzheim and the Rhine had half drawn 
his sword to punish a disgusting insult, to which he had been sub- 
jected by a rash young officer, he thrust it back into the sheath, 
with the words : " Young man, could I wipe your blood from my 
conscience with as much ease as I can this filthy proof of your 
folly from my face, I would take your life upon the spot." 

Even the chivalrous knights who thought duelling a worthy 
occupation for men of valor, reduced opportunities for its practice 
to a very small extent. Uniting with the church, they instituted 
the Savior's Truce, by which duels were prohibited from Wednes- 
day to the following Monday, because, it was said, those days had 
been consecrated by our Savior'?? Passion. This, in fact, left only 
Tuesday as a clear day for settling quarrels by force of arms. 

There probably never existed a mortal who was opposed by 
more powerful or more malignant adversaries than St. Augustin 
was. His great enemies the Donatists never, it is true, challenged 
him to any more dangerous affray than a war of literary contro- 
versy. But it was in answer to one of their missiles hurled against 
him, in the form of an assertion, that the majority of authors was 
on their side, he aptly told them that it was the sign of a cause 



68 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

destitute of truth when only the erring authority of many men 
could be relied on. 

The Norman knights or chiefs introduced the single combat 
among us. It is said they -were principally men who had disgraced 
themselves in the face of the enemy, and who sought to wipe out 
the disgrace in the blood of single individuals. It is worthy of 
remark too, that when king and sovereign princes had forbidden 
duelling, under the heaviest penalties, the popes absolved the mon- 
archs from their vows when the observance of them would have 
put in peril the lives of offending nobles who had turned to Rome 
in their perplexity, and who had gained there a reputation for 
piety, as Hector did, who was esteemed so highly religious, for no 
other reason than that he had covered with rich gifts the altar of 
the father of Olympus. 

Supported by the appearance that impunity was to be purchased 
at Rome, and encouraged by the example of fighting-cardinals 
themselves, duelling and assassination stalked hand in hand abroad. 
In France alone, in the brief space of eighteen years, four thousand 
gentlemen were killed in rencontres, upon quarrels of the most 
trivial nature. In the same space of time, not less than fourteen 
thousand pardons for duelling were granted. In one province 
alone, of France, in Limousin, one hundred and twenty gentlemen 
were slain in six months — a greater number than had honorably 
fallen in the same period, which was one of war, in defence of the 
sovereign, their country, and their homes. The term rencontre 
was used in France to elude the law. If gentlemen " met" by 
accident and fought, lawyers pleaded that this was not a duel, 
which required preliminaries between the two parties. How fre- 
quent the rencontres were, in spite of the penalty of death, is thus 
illustrated by Victor Hugo, in his Marion Delorme : — 

" Toujours norabre de duels, le trois c'etait d'Angennes 
Contre d'Arquien, pour avoir porte du point de Genes. 
Lavarde avec Pons s'est rencontre le dix, 
Pour avoir pris a Pons la ferame de Sourdis. 
Sourdis avec Dailly pour une du theatre 
De Mondorf. Le neuf, Nogent avec Lachatre, 
Pour avoir mal ecrit trois vers de Colletet. 
Gorde avec Margaillan, pour l'heure qu'il etait. 



DEATH AND BURIAL. 69 

D'Himiere avec Gondi, pour le pas a l'eglise. 
Et puis tous les Brissac avec tous les Soubise, 
A propos d'un pari d'un cheval contre un chien. 
Enfin, Caussade avec Latournelle, pour rien. 
Pour le plaisir, Caussade a rue Latournelle. 

Jeremy Taylor denounced this practice with great earnestness, 
and with due balancing of the claims of honor and of Christianity. 
" Yea ; but flesh and blood can not endure a blow or a disgrace. 
Grant that too ; but take this into the account : flesh and blood 
shall not inherit the kingdom of God." 

What man could endure for honor's sake, however, is shown in 
the Memoirs of the Sieur de Pontis, who, in the seventeenth cen- 
tury, was asked to be second to a friend, when duels were punish- 
able by death to all parties concerned in them. The friend of De 
Pontis pressed it on him, as a custom always practised among 
friends; and his captain and lieutenant- colonel did not merely 
permit, but ordered him to do what his friend desired. 

Boldly as many knights met death, there were not a few who 
did their best, and that very wisely, to avoid " the inevitable." 

Yalorously as some chevaliers encountered deadly peril, the 
German knights, especially took means to avoid the grisly adver- 
sary when they could. For this purpose, they put on the Noth- 
hemd or shirt of need. It was supposed to cover the wearer with 
invulnerability. The making of the garment was a difficult and 
solemn matter. Several maidens of known integrity assembled 
together on the eve of the Nativity, and wove and sewed together this 
linen garment, in the name of the devil ! On the bosom of the 
shirt were worked two heads ; one was long-bearded and covered 
with the knightly helmet, the other was savage of aspect, and 
crowned like the king of demons. A cross was worked on either 
side. How this could save a warrior from a mortal stroke, it 
would be difficult to say. If it was worn over the armor, perhaps 
the helmeted e&gj was supposed to protect the warrior, and the 
demoniacal one to affright his adversary. But then, this shirt 
similarly made and adorned, was woven by ladies when about to 
become mothers of knights or of common men. What use it could 
be in such case, I leave to the " commeres" to settle. My own 
vocation of " gossip" will not help me to the solution. 



70 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

But if chivalry had its shirts of need in Germany, to save from 
death, in England and France it had its " mercy-knives" to swiftly 
inflict it. Why they were so called I do not know, for after all 
they were only employed in order to kill knights in full armor, by 
plunging the knife through the bars of the visor into the eye. 
After the battle of Pavia, many of the French were killed with 
pickaxes by the peasantry, hacking and hewing through the joints 
of the armor. 

How anxious were the sires of those times to train their chil- 
dren how best to destroy life ! This was more especially the case 
among what were called the " half-christened Irish" of Connausrht. 
In this province, the people left the right arms of their male infants 
unchristened. They excepted that part coming under the divine 
influences of baptism, in order that the children, when grown to 
the stature of fighting men, might deal more merciless and deadly 
blows. There was some such superstitious observance as this, I 
think, in ancient Germany. It can not be said, in reference to the 
suppressing of this observance, as was remarked by Stow after 
the city authorities had put down the martial amusement of the 
London apprentices — contending against one another of an even- 
ing with cudgels and bucklers, while a host of admiring maids as 
well as men stood by to applaud or censure — that the open pastime 
being suppressed, worse practice within doors probably followed. 

Stout fellows were some of the knights of the romantic period, 
if we may believe half that is recorded of them. There is one, 
Branor le Brun, who is famous for having been a living Quintain. 
The game so called consists of riding at a heavy sack suspended 
on a balanced beam, and getting out of its way, if possible, before 
the revolving beam brought it round violently against the back of 
the assailant's head. When Palamedes challenged old Branor, 
the aged knight rather scornfully put him aside as an unworthy 
yet valiant knight. Branor, however, offered to sit in his saddle 
motionless, while Palamedes rode at him, and got unhorsed by 
Branor's mere inert resistance. I forget how many knights 
Branor le Brun knocked over their horses' cruppers, after this 
quiet fashion. 

It was not all courtesy in battle or in duel. Even Gyron, who 
was called the " courteous," was a very " rough customer" indeed, 



DUELLING, DEATH AND BUEIAL. 71 

when he had his hand on the throat of an antagonist. We hear 
of him jumping with all his force upon a fallen and helpless foe, 
tearing his helmet from its fastenings by main force, battering the 
knight's face with it till he was senseless, and then beating on his 
head with the pommel of his sword, till the wretched fellow was 
dead. At this sort of pommelling there was never knight so ex- 
pert as the great Bayard. The courtesy of the most savage in 
fight, was however undeniable when a lady was in the case. Thus 
we hear of a damsel coming to a fountain at which four knights 
were sitting, and one of them wishes to take her. The other three 
object, observing that the damsel is without a knight to protect 
her, and that she is, therefore, according to the law of chivalry, 
exempt from being attacked. And again, if a knight slew an ad- 
versary of equal degree, he did not retain his sword if the latter 
was a gift from some lady. The damsel, in such case, could claim 
it, and no knight worthy of the name would have thought of refu- 
sing to comply with her very natural request. Even ladies were 
not to be won, in certain cases, except by valor ; as Arthur, that 
king of knights, would not win, nor retain, Britain, by any other 
means. The head of Bran the Blessed, it may be remembered, 
was hidden in the White Hill, near London, where, as long as it 
remained, Britain was invulnerable. Arthur, however removed 
it. He scorned to keep the island by any other means than his 
own sword and courage ; and he was ready to fight any man in 
any quarrel. 

Never did knight meet death more nobly than that Captain 
Douglas, whose heroism is recorded by Sir William Temple, and 
who " stood and burnt in one of our ships at Chatham, when his 
soldiers left him, because it never should be said a Douglas quitted 
his post without orders." Except as an example of heroic endu- 
rance, this act, however, was in some degree a mistake, for the 
state did not profit by it. There was something more profitable in 
the act of Von Speyk, in our own time. When hostilities were 
raging between Holland and Belgium, in 1831, the young Dutch 
captain, just named, happened to be in the Scheldt, struggling in 
his gun-boat against a gale which, in spite of all his endeavors and 
seamanship, drove him ashore, under the guns of the Belgians. 
A crowd of Belgian volunteers leaped aboard, ordered him to haul 



72 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

down his colors and surrender. Von Speyk hurried below to the 
magazine, fell upon his knees in prayer, flung a lighted cigar into 
an open barrel of powder, and blew his ship to atoms, with nearly 
all who were on board. If he, by this sacrifice, prevented a 
Dutch vessel from falling into the enemy's power, he also deprived 
Holland of many good seamen. The latter country, however, only 
thought of the unselfish act of heroism, in one who had been gra- 
tuitously educated in the orphan house at Amsterdam, and who 
acquitted his debt to his country, by laying down his life when 
such sacrifice was worth making. His king and countrymen 
proved that they could appreciate the noble act. The statue of 
Von Speyk was placed by the side of that of De Ruyter, and the 
government decreed that as long as a Dutch navy existed there 
should be one vessel bearing the name of Von Speyk. 

To return to the knights of earlier days, I will observe that in- 
different as many of them were to meeting death, they, and indeed 
other men of note, were very far from being so as to the manner 
in which they should be disposed of after death. In their stone 
or marble coffins, they lay in graves so shallow that the cover of 
the coffin formed part of the pavement of the church. Whitting- 
ham, the Puritan Dean of Durham, took up many of their coffins 
and converted them into horse or swine troughs. This is the dean 
who is said to have turned the finely-wrought holy-water vessels 
into salting-tubs for his own use. 

Modern knights have had other cares about their graves than 
that alluded to above. Sir William Browne, for instance, one of 
George II.'s knights, and a medical man of some repute, who died 
in 1770, ordered by his will that when his coffin was lowered into 
the grave, there should be placed upon it, " in its leathern case or 
coffin, my pocket Elzevir Horace, comes vise vitaeque dulcis et 
utilis, worn out with and by me." There was nothing more un- 
reasonable in this than in a warrior-knight being buried with all 
his weapons around him. And, with respect to warrior-knights 
and what was done with them after death, I know nothing more 
curious than what is told us by Stavely on the authority of Streder. 
I will give it in the author's own words. 

" Don John of Austria," says Stavely, " governor of the Nether- 
lands for Philip II. of Spain, dying at his camp at Buge" (Bouges, 



DUELLING, DEATH AND BURIAL. 73 

a mile from Namur), " was carried from thence to the great church 
at Havre, where his funeral was solemnized and a monument to 
posterity erected for him there by Alexander Farnese, the Prince 
of Parma. Afterward his body was taken to pieces, and the bones, 
packed in mails, were privately carried into Spain, where, being 
set together with small wires, the body was rejointed again, which 
being filled or stuffed with cotton, and richly habited, Don John 
was presented to the King, entire, leaning upon his commander's 
staff, and looking as if he were alive and breathing. Afterward 
the corpse being earned to the Church of St. Laurence, at the 
Escurial, was there buried near his father, Charles V., with a fit- 
ting monument erected for him." 

Considering that there was, and is, a suspicion that Philip II. 
had poisoned his kinsman, the interview must have been a start- 
ling one. But Philip II. was not, perhaps, so afraid of dead men 
as the fourth Spanish king of that name. Philip IV., by no means 
an unknightly monarch, was born on a Good Friday, and as there 
is a Spanish superstition that they who are born on that day see 
ghosts whenever they pass the place where any one has been killed 
or buried, who died a violent death, this king fell into a habit of 
carrying his head so high, in order to avoid seeing those spirits, 
that his nose was continually en Vair, and he appeared to see no- 
body. 

Romance, and perhaps faithful history, are full of details of the 
becoming deaths of ancient knights, upon the field. I question, 
however, if even Sir Philip Sidney's was more dignified than that 
of a soldier of the 58th infantry, recorded in Nichols's " Anecdotes 
of the Eighteenth Century." A straggling shot had struck him in 
the stomach. As he was too dreadfully wounded to be removed, 
he desired his comrades would pray by him, and the whole guard 
knelt round him in prayer till he died. Bishop Hurd remarked, 
when this was told him, that " it was true religion." There was 
more of religion in such sympathy than there was of taste in the 
condolence of Alnwick, on the death of Hugh, Duke of Northum- 
berland — a rather irascible officer, and Knight of the Garter. 
" 0," cried the Alnwick poet — 

"■O rueful sight ! Bebo]d. how lost to sense 
The millions stand, suspended by suspense \" 



74 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

But all fruitlessly were the millions so suspended, for as the min- 
strel remarked in his Threnodia — 

"When Time shall yield to Death, Dukes must obey." 

" Dying in harness," is a favorite phrase in chivalric annals to 
illustrate the bravery of a knight falling in battle, " clothed in com- 
plete steel." So to die, however, was not always to die in a fray. 
Hume says of Seward, Earl of Northumberland, that there are 
two circumstances related of him, " which discover his high sense 
of honor and martial disposition. When intelligence was brought 
to him of his son Osborne's death, he was inconsolable till he heard 
the wound was received on his breast, and that he had behaved 
with great gallantry in the action. When he found his own death 
approaching, he ordered his servants to dress him in a complete 
suit of armor, and sitting erect on the couch, with a spear in his 
hand, declared that in that position, the only one worthy of a war- 
rior, he would patiently await the fatal moment." 

See how the chief of many a field 

Prepares to give his latest breath ; 
And, like a well-trimmed warrior, yield 

Becomingly t' impending death — 
That one, stern conqueror of all, 

Of chieftain in embattled tower, 
Of lord within his ancient hall, 

And maiden in her trellised bower. 

To meet that surest of all foes, 

From off his soft and pillowed bed, 
With dignity old Seward rose, 

And to a couch of state was led. 
Painting, yet firm of purpose there, 

Stately as monarch on his throne, 
Upright he sat, with kingly air, 

To meet the coming foe, alone. 

"Take from these limbs," he weakly cried, 

" This soft and womanish attire ; 
Let cloak and cap be laid aside — 

Seward will die as died his sire : 
Not clad in silken vest and shirt, 

Like princes in a fairy tale ; 
With iron be these old limbs girt — 

My vest of steel, my shirt of mail. 



DUELLING, DEATH AND BURIAL. 75 

" Close let my sheaf of arrows stand ; 

My mighty battle-axe now bring ; 
My ashen spear place in my hand ; 

Around my neck my buckler sling. 
Let my white locks once more be pressed 

By the old cap of Milan steel ; 
Such soldier's gear becomes them best — 

They love their old defence to feel. 

" 'Tis well ! Now buckle to my waist 

My well-tried gleaming blade of Spain 
My old blood leaps in joyful haste 

To feel it on my thigh again. 
And here this pendent loop upon, 

Suspend my father's dagger bright ; 
My spurs of gold, too, buckle on — 

Or Seward dies not like a knight." 

'Twas done. No tear bedimmed his eyes — 

His manly heart had ne'er known fear ; 
It answered not the deep-fetched sighs 

Of friends and comrades standing near. 
Death was upon him : that grim foe 

Who smites the craven as the brave. 
With patience Seward met the blow — 

Prepared and willing for the grave. 

The manner of the death, or rather of the dying of Seward, 
Earl of Northumberland, was in part, unconsciously, imitated by 
the great Mansfeldt. When the career of the latter was nearly at 
its close, his fragile frame was already worn out by excess of action 
— his once stout soul irritated by disappointment, and his former 
vigorous constitution shattered by the ravages of a disease which 
had long preyed on it in secret. The erst gallant knight lay help- 
less in the miserable village of Zara, in Dalmatia. As he found 
his last moment drawing near, he put on one of his richest uni- 
forms, and girded his favorite sword to his side. It was the one 
he most constantly carried in battle. Thus accoutrep, he sum- 
moned his chief officers to attend him. He was held up by the 
two whom he most wished to distinguish, because of their unwa- 
vering fidelity. Thus upheld, he exhorted all to go on, unwearied, 
in the path of glory ; and, living or dying, never to bate a breath 
of inveterate hatred for Austria — whose government has been ac- 



76 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

cursed in all time, since there has been an Austria, for its unmiti- 
gated infamy. " With the indifference of a man preparing for. a 
journey of no extraordinary importance," thus speaks Naylor, 
when describing the scene, " he continued tranquilly to converse 
with his friends to the latest moment of his existence. His body 
was interred with military pomp at Spalatio, in Dalmatia, at the 
expense of the Venetians. Thus was the emperor delivered from 
an enemy who, though often defeated, never ceased to be formida- 
ble ; and whose transcendent genius was so fertile in resources, 
that, without the smallest funds to support the expenses of war, he 
maintained an honorable contest during seven campaigns' against 
the most powerful monarchs in Europe." 

His hour at length is come : 
The hero of a hundred fields, 
Who never yielded, only yields 

To Him who rules the tomb. 

He whose loud trumpet's blast, 
Carried upon the trembling gale 
The voice of death o'er hill and dale, 

Is struck himself at last. 

The same who, but of late, 
Serenely saw destruction hurled, 
And slaughter sweeping through the world, 

Serenely meets his fate. 

The spirit of the brave, 
That led him o'er the embattled plain 
'Gainst lines of foes, o'er countless slain, 

Waits on him to the grave. 

And with his latest breath 
The warrior dons his proud array, 
Prepared to meet, and to obey, 

His last commander — Death! 

The mournful tears and sighs 
Fall not for him who, like the swan, 
Wears his best plumes, sings sweetly on, 
Sounds his last song — and dies ! 

With regard to the burial of knights, we may observe that, down 
to a comparatively late period the knights and barons of England 



DEATH AND BURIAL. 77 

were buried with much solemn splendor. At the obsequies of a 
baron, there was an official present who wore the armor of the 
defunct, mounted a horse in full trappings, and carried the banner, 
shield, and helmet, of the deceased. So, in Henry the Eighth's 
time, Lord William Courtney was buried with the ceremonies ob- 
served at the funeral of an earl, to which rank it had been the 
king's intention to elevate him. On this occasion Sir Edmund 
Carew, a gallant knight, rode into the church in full armor, with 
the point of his battle-axe downward — a token, like a reversed 
torch, of death. 

The latest instance I have met with of a union of ancient and 
modern customs at the burial of a knight, occurred at Treves, in 
1781, at the interment of the Teutonic knight, General Frederick 
Casimir. This gallant soldier's charger was led to the brink of 
the grave in which the body had just been deposited ; the throat 
of the steed was swiftly cut by an official, and the carcass of the 
horse was flung down upon the coffin of the knight. Such sacri- 
fices were once common enough. At the funerals in England of 
cavalry soldiers, or of mounted officers, the horse is still proces- 
sionally conducted to the brink of the grave, but we are too wisely 
economical to leave him there, or to fling him into it. 

Where chivalry had great perils and temptations, we need not 
be surprised to find that there were many scions of noble houses 
who either declined to win spurs by encountering mortal danger, 
or who soon grew weary of making the attempt. Let us, then, 
consider the unambitious gentlemen who grew " tired of it." 



78 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 



THE KNIGHTS WHO GREW " TIRED OF IT." 

" How blest are they that waste their weary hours 
In solemn groves and solitary bower 
"Where neither eye nor ear 
Can see or hear 
The frantic mirth 
And false delights of frolic earth ; 
Where they may sit and pant, 
And breathe their pursy souls ; 
"Where neither grief consumes, nor gaping want 
Afflicts, nor sullen care controls ! 
Away false joys ! Ye murder where ye kiss ; 
There is no heaven to that, no life to this." 

Fkancis Quarles. 

As marriage or the cloister was the alternative submitted to 
most ladies in the days of old, so young men of noble families had 
small choice but between the church and chivalry. Some, indeed, 
commenced with arms, won knightly honors, cared nothing for 
them when they had obtained the prize, and took up the clerical 
profession, or entered monasteries. There are many distinguished 
examples. There was first St. Mochua or Cluanus, who, after 
serving in arms with great distinction, entered a monastery and 
took to building churches and establishing cities. Of the former 
he built no less than thirty ; and he passed as many years in one 
church as he had built of churches themselves. He was the found- 
er of one hundred and twenty cells. He is to be looked upon with 
respect. Old warriors in our own days are often moved by the same 
impulse which governed Mochua ; and when we see retired admi- 
rals taking the chair at meetings where Dr. Cumming is about to 
exhibit ; or infirm major-generals supporting, with unabated men- 
tal energy, their so-called Puseyite pastors, we only look upon men 
who, acting conscientiously, are worthy of respect, and are such 
Mochuas as modern times and circumstances will admit of. 



THE KNIGHTS WHO GREW "TIRED OF IT." 79 

We have another example in Adelard, the cousin of Charle- 
magne. He was a gay and gallant chevalier at his imperial cous- 
in's court, and there was no stouter wielder of a sword in all the 
army ; but Alard, or Adelard, grew weary of camp and court alike. 
He fled from some very pretty temptations in the one, as well as great 
perils in the other. The young prince, he was only twenty, took 
the monastic habit at Corbie, where he was employed as a garden- 
er, and spoiled cartloads of vegetables before he got his hand and 
his thoughts to his new profession. He was occasionally busy too 
in the kitchen, but not to the visible gratification of the monks. 
Charlemagne often insisted on his appearing at court, where at last 
he held one or two high offices ; and, when he left, wrote a book 
for the guidance of courtiers generally, by which the latter as little 
profited, say wicked wits, as other nobility, for whom a nation has 
long prayed that grace, wisdom, and understanding might be their 
portion. St. Adelard, for the imperial knight was canonized, lived 
to be the chief authority in the monastery where he had commenced 
as cook and gardener, and St. Gerard composed an office in his 
honor, in gratitude for having been cured of a violent headache 
through the saint's interposition. This seems to me one of the 
oddest ways of showing gratitude for a small service that I ever 
heard of. 

I believe that St. Cedcl, Bishop of London, in very early days, 
was also of a family whose profession was military. When or 
why he entered the church I do not know ; but he has some con- 
nection with military matters in the fact that Tilbury Fort occu- 
pies part of the site of a monastery which St. Cedd had founded, 
in which he resided, and which was the pride of all the good people 
in the then pleasant and prosperous city of Tillabury. 

Touching St. Aldric, Bishop of Mans, there is no doubt what- 
ever. He was of a noble family, and commenced life at twelve 
years old, as page to Louis le Debonnaire, at the court of Charle- 
magne. He was speedily sick of the court, and as speedily sick 
of the camp. At the age of twenty-one he withdrew to Metz, en- 
tered the clerical profession, and became chaplain and confessor to 
the sovereign whom he had once served as page. His military 
training made him a very sharp disciplinarian during the quarter 
of a century that he was bishop ; and it is only to be regretted that 



80 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

he had not some influence over the king whose conscience he di- 
rected, and of whom a legend will be found in another part of this 
volume. 

There was a second son of Eric, King of Denmark, known by 
the name of St. Knudt or Canute. He was Duke of Schleswig, 
and was much more of a monk than a duke. He was canonized 
accordingly for his virtues. He had a rough way of joking. His 
knights were nothing better than robbers and pirates, and he re- 
solved to make them forswear violence and live peaceably. They 
represented, in vain, that they had a right to live as became 
knights, which Canute did not dispute ; he simply dissented from 
the construction of the right as set down by the knights themselves. 
To prevent all mistakes on the matter, he one day condemned 
seven of these gentlemen to be hanged for acts of piracy. One of 
these exclaimed that, " fitting as the sentence might be for his fel- 
lows, there must necessarily be exemption for him." He was like 
the German corporal in the " Etoile du Nord," who can very well 
understand that it is quite proper that a man should be hanged, 
but could not comprehend that he himself should be the man. The 
Schleswig knight claimed special exemption on the ground that he 
was a kinsman of Canute. The latter allowed that this entitled 
him to some distinction, and the saintly duke hung his cousin six 
feet higher than any of his accomplices. 

We come back more immediately to a knight who grew tired 
of his vocation, in the person of Nathalan, a Scottish noble of the 
fifth century. He sold arms, horses, and estate, divided the pro- 
ceeds among the poor, and devoted himself to preparations for or- 
dination, and the cultivation of vegetables. He bears a highly 
respectable reputation on the roll of Bishops of Aberdeen. 

"We meet with a man more famous, in Peter of Sebaste, whose 
pedigree showed more heroes than could be boasted by any of 
Peter's contemporaries. He is not an example, indeed, of a man 
quitting the camp for the cloister ; but he and two of his brothers 
exhibit to us three individuals who might have achieved great 
worldly profit, by adopting arms as a vocation, but who preferred 
the Church, and became, all three, bishops. 

We have a similar example in the Irish St. Felan. His high 
birth and great wealth would have made him the flower of Irish 



THE KNIGHTS WHO GREW "TIRED OF IT." 81 

chivalry, but he selected another profession, and despising chivalry, 
entered the Church. He went a Mundo ad Mundum, for it was 
from the hands of Abbot Mundus that he received the monastic 
habit. Thus, as it was wittily said, the world (Mundus) at once 
drove and drew him into the Church. It is clear, however, that, like 
the old war-horse, he pricked up his ears at the sound of battle, 
and took an interest in stricken fields. To such conclusion we 
must come, if it be true, as is asserted of him, that the battle of 
Bannockburn, in 1314, was won by Bruce through the saint's es- 
pecial intercession. The Dukes of Normandy owed equal obliga- 
tions to St. Vaneng, who unbuckled the armor from his aristocratic 
loins, to cover them with a frock ; and built churches for the Nor- 
mans, where he offered up continual prayer for the Norman 
dukes. 

Then again, there was William. Berringer, of the family of the 
Counts of Nevers. No persuasion could induce the handsome 
William to continue in the career he had embraced, the career of 
chivalry and arms. His uncle, Peter the Hermit, may have had 
considerable influence over him, and his change of profession was 
by no means unprofitable, for the once horse-loving William be- 
came Archbishop of Bourges : and he defended the rights of his 
Church against kings and councils with as much boldness, zeal, 
and gallantry, as any knight could have exhibited against the stout- 
est of assailants. 

Among our English saints, the one who most nearly resembles 
him is St. Egwin, who was of the royal blood of the Mercian kings, 
and who, after a short trial of the profession of arms, retired to the 
cloister, but was ultimately raised to the see of Worcester. The 
spirit of the man may perhaps be seen through the legend which 
says that on setting out on a penitential pilgrimage to Rome, he 
put iron shackles on his legs, the key of which shackles he flung 
into the Avon. This is very possible ; but when we are told that 
on requiring the key at a subsequent period, he found it inside a 
fish, we see that the author of the legend has plagiarized from the 
original constructor of the story of Polycrates and his ring. 

St. Egwin was far less a benefactor to his fellow-men that St. 
Benedict Biscop, a noble knight of the court of Oswi, the pious 
king of the Northumbrians. When Benedict, or Bennet, as he is 

6 



OZ THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

familiarly called, retired from the profession of arms to follow that 
of the Church, he continued quite as active, and twice as useful, 
as he had been before. He was a great traveller, spent and gave 
liberally, and brought over with him, from the continent, workers 
in stone to erect that monastery at Weremouth which, in its ruins, 
commemorates his name and deeds. He also brought from France 
the first glaziers who ever exercised the art of glass-making in 
England. Altogether St. Bennet is one of those who find means 
to effect good to others, whatever may be the position they are in 
themselves. 

Aelred of Bidal was a man of similar quality. He was a young 
North-of-England noble, when he figured as the handsomest cava- 
lier at the court of that " sair saint to the Church," the Scottish 
king, David. He was remarkable for his good temper, and was 
as well-disciplined a monk as he had been a military man ; for 
when he once happened to inadvertently break the rule of perma- 
nent silence, which prevailed in the monastery at Ridal, into 
which he entered at the age of twenty-five, he became so horror- 
stricken that he was eager to increase the penalty put upon him 
in consequence. He had only dropped a single word in the gar- 
den, to a monk who, like himself, had been a knight, but who gave 
him in return so edifying a scowl, that in an instant poor Aelred 
felt all the depth of his unutterable iniquity, and accounted himself 
as criminal as if he had set fire to the neighboring nunnery. He 
never afterward allowed himself the indulgence of reading his fa- 
vorite Cicero, but confined his reading to his own work " On Spir- 
itual Friendship," and other books of a similar description. 

The great St. Hilary was another of the men of noble family 
following arms as a vocation, who gave up the profession for that 
of the Church, and prospered remarkably in consequence. St. 
Felix of Nola affords us an additional illustration of this fact. Tins 
noble young soldier found no happiness in the business of slaugh- 
tering, and all the sophistry in the world could not persuade him 
that it was honorable. "It is a disgusting business," said the 
Saint, " and as I can hot be Felix [happy] in performing it, I will 
see if I can not be Felix in the Church ;" and the punning saint 
found what he sought. 

There is something more wonderful in the conversion of St. 



THE KNIGHTS WHO GREW "TIRED OF IT." 83 

Maurus. He was the son of a nobleman, had St. Benedict for a 
tutor, and was destined to the career of arms. The tutor, how- 
ever, having awoke him one night, and sent him to pick a monk 
out of the river, whom Benedict, in a dream, had seen fall in, 
Maurus, although no swimmer, obeyed, walked upon the surface 
of the water, pulled out the struggling monk, walked back with 
him, arm-in-arm, to the shore, and immediately concluded that he 
was called to another vocation than that of arms. As for St. John 
Calybyte, he would not be a soldier, but ran away from home be- 
fore his wealthy sire could procure him a commission, and only 
returned to stand, disguised as a mendicant, in front of his father's 
house, where he received alms till he died. A curious example 
of idiosyncrasy. St. Honoratus was wiser. He was of a consular 
family ; but, in declining the military profession, he addressed him- 
self with sincerity to be useful in the Church ; and the well-de- 
served result was that he became Archbishop of Aries. St. 
Anthony, the patriarch of monks, made still greater sacrifices, and 
chose rather to be a hermit than a commander of legions. St. 
Sulpicius, the Debonnair, was both rich and good-looking, but he 
cared less for helmet and feathers than for cord and cowl, and the 
archbishopric of Bourges rewarded his self-denial. There was 
more than one King Canute too, who, though not surrendering 
royalty and generalship of armies, seemed really more inclined, 
and indeed more fitted, to be studious monks than chivalrous mon- 
archs. Wulstan of Worcester was far more decided, for finding 
himself, one night, most warmly admiring the young lady who was 
his vis-a-vis in a dance, the gallant officer was so shocked at the 
impropriety, that he made it an excuse for taking to the cowl forth- 
with. He did not so ill by the exchange, for the cowl brought 
him to the mitre at Worcester. 

St. Sebastian was a far bolder man, seeing that although he 
hated a military life, he, to the very utmost, did his duty in that 
state of life to which it had pleased God to call him ; and if half 
be true of what is told of him, there never was knight of the actual 
days of chivalry who performed such bold and perilous actions as 
St. Sebastian. What was a cavalier, pricking against a dragon, 
to a Roman officer preaching Christianity to his men, under 
Diocletian ? 



84 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

In later days we meet with St. Raymund of Pennafort, the 
wealthy young lord, who, rather than serve for pay or plunder, 
went about teaching philosophy for nothing. St. John, the Patri- 
arch of Alexandria, might have been known as a conqueror, but 
he preferred being handed down, under the title of the Almoner. 
He was like that St. Cadoc who chose rather to be abbot in, than 
prince of, Wales. St. Poppo of Stavelo exhibited similar humil- 
ity. He was rapidly rising in the Flandrian army when he sud- 
denly sunk into a cell, and became a sort of Flemish John Wesley. 
He preached against all tournaments, but only succeeded in abol- 
ishing the very exciting combats between a knight and a bear, 
which were greatly patronized by Flemish ladies, and at which 
parties staked great sums upon their favorite animal. 

St. Francis of Sales, on the other hand, that gentlemanly saint, 
was saved from the knightly career which his noble birth seemed to 
promise him, by a vow made by his mother, before he was born. 
She was resolved that he should be a saint and not a soldier, and 
as all things went as the lady desired, she placed her son in a posi- 
tion direct for the Church, and the world certainly lost nothing by 
the matron's proceeding. I respect St. Francis of Sales all the 
more that he had small human failings, and did not scatter damna- 
tion over men whom he saw in a similar concatenation. Sulpicius 
Severus was, in many respects, like him, save that he had some 
experience of a soldier's life. But he laid down the sword for the 
pen, and gave us that admirable historical romance, in which he 
details so graphically the life of another noble warrior, who quitted 
the command of soldiers, to take up the teaching of men — St. 
Martin of Tours. 

There was a lady, St. Aldegonde, of the royal blood of France, 
in the seventh century, who at least encouraged young knights to 
abandon their fancied vocation, and assume that of monks or friars. 
She was, most undeservedly, I dare say, assailed by scandalizing 
tongues accordingly. Indeed, I never heard of lady more perse- 
cuted in this way, except perhaps this particular lady's namesake, 
who once belonged to the gay troupe of the Varietes, and to whom 
the most rattling of chansonniers alluded, in the line of a song, 
which put the significant query of 

Que fait Aldegonde avec le nionde entier ? 



THE KNIGHTS WHO GREW "TIRED OF IT." 85 

One of the most remarkable features in the characters of "many 
of these young nobles who were disinclined to take up arms, or 
who laid them down for the religious vocation, is the dread they 
entertained of matrimony. In illustration of this fact, I may notice 
the case of St. Silvin of Auchy. There was not a gayer or braver 
knight at the court of Childeric IL, nor a more welcome wooer 
among the ladies. In due time he proposed to a noble maiden, 
who was in a flutter of happiness at the thought of carrying off 
such a bachelor from a host of competitors. The wedding was 
brilliant, up to the conclusion of the ceremony. That over, no 
persuasion could induce the bridegroom to go to the breakfast. 
As he had been brought to the altar, there he was resolved to re- 
main. He denounced all weddings as wicked vanities, and dart- 
ing out of the church-door, left bride and bridal party to take what 
course they would. There was no end of conjectures as to the 
cause of the sudden fright which had seized upon the young bride- 
groom. The latter set it down to inspiration, and as he took to 
the cowl and led a most exemplary life, no one presumed to doubt 
it, except the bride and her relations. 

The case of St. Licinius is easier of explanation. He was the 
most rollicking knight-bachelor at the court of Clotaire I. It 
must, however, be said for him that he sowed his wild oats early, 
and fought none the less stoutly for going to mass daily, and con- 
fessing once a quarter. He was rich, and had a maiden neighbor 
who was richer. The families of knight and maiden were united 
in thinking that the estates of the two, encircled in one ring fence, 
would be one of the most desirable of consummations. The 
maiden was nothing loath, the knight alone was reluctant. He 
too, had Ins doubts about the excellence of marriage, and it was 
only with very considerable difficulty he was brought to woo the 
lady, who said " Yes" before the plume in his bonnet had touched 
the ground when he made his bow to her. The wedding-day was 
fixed, and as the old epitaph says, " wedding-clothes provided." 
On the eve of the eventful day, however, Licinius, on paying a 
visit to the bride, found her suddenly attacked with leprosy. The 
doctor protested that it would be nothing, but Licinius declared 
that it was a warning which he dared not neglect. He looked at 
the leprous lady, muttered the word "unpleasant," and at once 



86 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

betook himself, not to active military life, but to a religious mission. 
In this occupation he is alleged to have performed such miracles 
as to deserve canonization, if only the half of them were true. 

Now, a bride afflicted with leprosy may fairly be said to be an 
unpleasant sight. Licinius may even be considered authorized to 
hesitate in performing his promise, if not in altogether declaring 
off. We can not say as much in extenuation of another knight 
who broke his word to a lady, and was clapped into the Roman 
calendar of deified men. This gentleman in question had a rather 
unchristian-sounding name. He was called Abraham of Chiduna. 
At tilt and tournament, and in tented field, there was no cavalier 
who sat more perfectly hi saddle, or handled his lance and wielded 
his battle-axe with more terrible effect. He was of noble birth, of 
course ; was wealthy, somewhat addicted to light living, in his salad 
days, but a man who lived soberly enough when those were over. 
He then resolved to marry, and he had the " good taste," if one 
may use a term which, we are told, belongs to the literary milliner's 
vocabulary, to offer himself to, and ask the hand of a very pious 
maiden with a highly satisfactory dower. The required conclusion 
was soon come to, and one fine spring morning saw the two prin- 
cipals and their respective friends in church. The knight, it is 
true, was the last to arrive, and he had been, previously, as unwil- 
ling to get up and be married, as Master Barnardine was to get 
up and be hanged. He was finally brought to the altar, and after 
some little delay, such as searching for the ring which he had mis- 
placed, and only recovered after much search, the nuptial knot 
was tied. When this had been accomplished, surrounding friends 
approached to offer their congratulations ; but the icy Abraham 
coldly waved them back, and announced his determination, then 
and there, to end his short-lived married state. As he immediately 
rushed into the wood which was in the vicinity of the church, 
there was a universal cry that he contemplated suicide. The 
bride was conveyed home amid much sympathy, and a general 
but an ineffectual search was made for the " groom." Yet, not 
altogether ineffectual, for at the end of seventeen days he was dis- 
covered, offering up his orisons, in the midst of a marsh. There 
he had been, he said, for a fortnight, and there he declared he 
would remain, unless those who sought him consented to the terms 



THE KNIGHTS WHO GREW "TIRED OF IT." 87 

he should propose. These were, that he should be allowed to 
retire to a cell which should be entirely walled up, save a small 
square aperture for a window. The agreement was ratified, and 
Abraham was shut up according to his desire ; and by a long life 
of seclusion, passed in preaching to all who approached the win- 
dow, and taking in all they brought through the same aperture, 
Abraham has had " Beatus" attached to his name, and that name 
has been recorded upon the roll of saints. 

If there be any reader who objects to this story as unnatural, I 
would remark to the same, that similar incidents may be met with 
in our own time. In proof thereof I will briefly relate an anecdote 
which was told me by the reverend father of a legal knight, who 
was himself the officiating minister at the ceremony of which I 
am about to speak. 

To the clergyman of a pretty village in Wales, due notice had 
been given, and all prehminary legal observances having been 
fulfilled, he awaited in his vestry, ready to marry an ex-sergeant 
and one of the girls of the village. The canonical hours were 
fast gliding away, and yet the priest was not summoned to the 
altar. By certain sounds he could tell that several persons had 
assembled in the church, and he had two or three times seen a 
pretty face peeping in at the vestry-door, with a look upon it of 
pleasure to see that he was still there, and of perplexity as if there 
was something to be told which only waited to be asked for. At 
half-past eleven the face again peeped in, whereupon the clergy- 
man invited the owner of it to approach nearer. The invitation 
was obeyed, and the clergyman inquired the reason for the unu- 
sual delay, remarking at the same time, that if the parties were 
not speedily prepared it would be too late to perform the ceremony 
that day. 

" Well sir," said the nymph, " I was about asking your advice. 
I am the bride's sister ; and there is a difficulty — " 

" What is it ?" asked the priest. 

" Just this, sir," said Jenny. " Sergeant Jones has promised to 
marry sister Winnifred if father will put down five pounds. 
Father agrees ; but he says that if he puts down the money before 
the marriage, the sergeant will walk off. And the sergeant will 
not come up to be married till the money is put down. So, you 



88 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

see, sir, we are in a terrible difficulty ; and we want you to pro- 
pose a method to get us out of it." 

" There is nothing easier," said the minister ; " let your father 
put the money into the hands of a trusty third person, who will 
promise to place it in the sergeant's possession as soon as he has 
married your sister." 

Jenny Morgan saw the excellence of the device in a moment, 
rushed back to the bridal parties, and they showed their apprecia- 
tion of the clergyman's suggestion, by crowding to the altar as 
soon as the preliminary proceeding recommended to them had 
been accomplished. At length the clergyman came to the words, 
" Wilt thou have tins woman to thy wedded wife ?" 

" Jack," said the ex-sergeant, looking round at the stake-holder, 
" have you got the cash ?" 

"All right!" nodded Jack. 

" Then I will," said the sergeant ; " and now, Jack, hand over 
the tin" 

The agreement was rigidly fulfilled ; but had not the minister 
thought of the means which solved the difficulty, Sergeant Jones 
would have been nearly as ungallant to his lady as Abraham, 
Silvin, and Licinius, had been to theirs. 

But to return to Abraham. I have said this knight, on assuming 
his monkly character, had caused himself to be Availed up in his 
cell. I have my suspicions, however, that it was a theatrical sort 
of wall, for it is very certain that the saint could pass through it. 
Now, there resided near him a lady recluse who was his " niece," 
and whose name was Mary. The two were as inseparable as the 
priest Lacombe and Madame Guyon ; and probably were as little 
deserving of reproach. This Mary was the original of " Little 
Red Riding Hood." She used to convey boiled milk and butter, 
and other necessary matters to her uncle Abraham. Now it hap- 
pened that the ex-knight used also to be visited by a monk whose 
name was Wolf, or who, at all events, has been so called by hagi- 
ographers, on account of his being quite as much of a beast as the 
quadruped so called. The monk was wont to fall in with Mary 
as she was on her way to her uncle's cell with pleasant condiments 
under a napkin, in a wicker-basket. He must have been a monk 
of the Count Ory fashion, and he was as seductive as Ponchard, 



THE KNIGHTS WHO GREW "TIRED OF IT." 89 

when singing " Gentille Annette" to the " Petit Chaperon Rouge," 
in Boieldieu's Opera. The result was, that the monk carried off 
Mary to a neighboring city — Edessa, if I remember rightly — and 
if I am wrong, Mr. Mitchell Kemble will, perhaps, set me right, 
in his bland and gentleman-like way. The town-life led by these 
two was of the most disgraceful nature ; and when the monk had 
grown tired of it, he left Mary to lead a worse, without him. 
Mary became the " Reine Pomare," the " Mogadore," the " Rose 
Pomponne" of Edessa, and was the terror of all families where 
there were elder sons and latch-keys. Her doings and her where- 
abouts at length reached the ears of her uncle Abraham, and not 
a little astonished were those who knew the recluse to see him one 
morning, attired in a pourpoint of rich stuff, with a cloak like 
Almaviva's, yellow buskins with a fall of lace over the tops, a 
jaunty cap and feather on his head, a rapier on his thigh, and a 
steed between his legs, which curveted under his burden as though 
the fun of the thing had given it lightness. At Mary's supper, 
this cavalier was present on the night of his arrival in Edessa. 
He scattered his gold like a Crcesus, and Mary considered him 
worth all the more penniless knights put together. When these 
had gone, as being less welcome, Abraham declared his relation- 
ship, and acted on the right it gave him to rate a niece who was 
not only an ungrateful minx, but who was as mendacious as an 
ungrateful niece could well be. The old gentleman, however, had 
truth on his side, and finally so overwhelmed Mary with its terrible 
application, that she meekly followed him back to the desert, and 
passed fifteen years in a walled-up cell close to that of her uncle. 
The miracles the two performed are adduced as proofs of the 
genuineness of the personages and their story ; matters which I 
would not dispute even if I had room for it. 

The next knight whom I can call to mind as having been fright- 
ened by marriage into monkery, is St. Vandrille, Count of the 
Palace to King Dagobert. During the period of his knightship 
he was a very Don Juan for gallantry, and railed against matri- 
mony as conclusively as a Malthusian. His friends pressed him 
to marry nevertheless ; and introduced him to a lady with a hun- 
dred thousand golden qualities, and prospects as auriferous as those 
of Miss Kilmansegg. He took the lady's hand with a reluctance 



90 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

that might be called aversion, and which he did not affect to con- 
ceal. When the nuptial ceremony was concluded, Knight Van- 
drille, as eccentric as the cavaliers whose similar conduct I have 
already noticed, mildly intimated that it was not his intention to 
proceed further, and that for his part, he had renounced the vani- 
ties of this world for aye. Taking the lady apart, he appears to 
have produced upon her a conviction that the determination was 
one he could not well avoid ; and we are not told that she even 
reproached him for a conduct which seems to me to have been a 
thousand times more selfish and inexcusable than that of the clever 
but despicable Abelard. The church, however, did not disapprove 
of the course adopted, and St. Yandrille, despite his worse than 
breach of promise, has been forgiven as knight, and canonized as 
saint. 

Far more excusable was that little Count of Arian, Elzear, the 
boy-knight at the court of Charles II., King of Sicily, whom that 
monarch married at the age of thirteen years, to Delphina of 
Glandeves, a young lady of fifteen. When I say far more excu- 
sable, I do Elzear some injustice, for the boy was willing enough 
to be wed, and looked forward to making his lady proud of his 
own distinction as a knight. Delphina, however, it was who pro- 
posed that they should part at the altar, and never meet again. 
She despised the boy, and the little cavalier took it to heart — so 
much so, that he determined to renounce the career of arms and 
enter the church. Thereby chivalry lost a worthy cavalier, and 
the calendar gained a very active saint. 

Elzear might well feel aggrieved. There have been knights 
even younger than he, who have carried spurs before they were 
thirteen. This reminds me of a paragraph in an article which I 
contributed to " Fraser's Magazine," in March, 1844, under the 
title of "A Walk across Bohemia," in which, speaking of the 
Imperial Zeughaus at Vienna, I noticed " the suit of armor of that 
little hero, the second Louis of Hungary, he who came into this 
breathing world some months before he was welcome, and who 
supported his character for precocity by marrying at twelve, and 
becoming the legitimate bearer of all the honors of paternity as 
soon as he entered his teens ; who moreover maintained his con- 
sistency by turning a gray old man at sixteen, and finally termi- 



THE KNIGHTS WHO GREW "TIRED OF IT." 91 

nated his ephemeral course on the field of battle before he became 
of age." Elzear then was not, perhaps, so poor a knight as his 
older lady seemed disposed to count him. 

I must be briefer with noticing the remaining individuals who 
either flung up chivalry for the Church, or who preferred the latter 
to following a knightly career. First, there was St. Anscharius, 
who after he had made the change alluded to, was standing near 
the easy Olas, King of Sweden, when the latter cast lots to decide 
whether Christianity should be the religion of the state, or not. 
We are told that the prayers of St. Anscharius caused the king to 
throw double-sixes in favor of the better cause. 

St. Andrew Cossini made an admirable saint after being the 
most riotous of cavaliers. So St. Amandus of Nantes won his 
saintship by resigning his lordship over men-at-arms. Like him 
was that St. Romuald of the family of the Dukes of Ravenna, who, 
whether fighting or hunting, loved to retire from the fray and the 
chase, to pray at peace, in shady places. St. John of Malta and 
St. Stephen of Grandmont were men of the like kidney. St. Ben- 
edict of Anian was that famous cup-bearer of. Charlemagne, who 
left serving the Emperor in hall and field, to serve a greater mas- 
ter with less ostentation. He followed the example of that St. 
Auxentius, who threw up his commission in the equestrian guard 
of Theodosius the Younger, to take service in a body of monks. 

Many of those who renounced arms, or would not assume mili- 
tary service when opportunity offered itself, profited personally by 
the adoption of such a course. Thus St. Porphyrius was a knight 
till he was twenty-five years of age, and he died Bishop of Gaza. 
The knight St. Wulfran became Bishop of Sens. St. Hugh won 
the bishopric of Grenoble, by not only renouncing knighthood him- 
self, but by inducing his father to follow his example. St. Norbert 
became Archbishop of Magdeburg, after leading a jolly life, not 
only as a knight but as priest. A fall from his horse brought him 
to a sense of decency. A prophecy of a young maiden to St. Ulric 
gained him his saintship and the bishopric of Augsburg. Had she 
not foretold he would die a bishop, he would have been content 
to carry a banner. Examples like these are very numerous, but 
I have cited enough. 

Few in a worldly sense made greater sacrifice than St. Casimir, 



92 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

son of Casimir III., King of Poland. He so loved his reverend 
tutor, Dugloss, that, to be like him, he abandoned even his chance 
of the throne, and became a priest. St. Benedict of Umbria took 
a similar course, upon a smaller scale ; and not all the persuasions 
of his nurse, who ran after him when he ran away from home, 
could induce him to be anything but a priest. St. Herman Joseph, 
of Cologne, showed how completely he had abandoned the knightly 
character, when, as monk, he begged the peasants whom he taught, 
to be good enough to buffet him well, and cuff him soundly, as it 
was impossible for him to have a sufficiency of kicks and contempt. 
St. Guthlac, the noble hermit of Croyland, evinced more dignity 
in his retirement, and the same may be said of St. Peter Regalati, 
and St. Ubaldus of Gabio. The latter was resolute neither to 
marry nor take arms. He liked no turmoil, however qualified. 
St. Vincent of Lerins did bear arms for years, but he confessed he 
did not like the attendant dangers — threatening him spiritually, 
not bodily, and he took the cowl and gained a place in the sacred 
calendar accordingly. St. Aloysius Gonzaga, whose father was a 
prince, was another of the young gentlemen for whom arms had 
little attraction. The humility of this young gentleman, however, 
had a very silly aspect, if it all resembled what is said of him by 
Father Caperius. "He never looked on women, kept his eye 
strictly guarded, and generally cast down ; would never stay with 
his mother alone in her chamber, and if she sent in any message 
to him by some lady in her company, he received it, and gave his 
answer in a few words, with his eyes shut, and his chamber-door 
only half open ; and when bantered on that score, he ascribed such 
behavior to his bashfulness. It was owing to his original modesty 
that he did not know by their face many ladies among his own re- 
lations, with whom he had frequently conversed ; and that he was 
afraid and ashamed to let a footman see so much as his foot un- 
covered." Whatever the soft Aloysius may have been fit for, it is 
clear that he was not fit for chivalry. Something akin to him 
was St. Theobald of Champagne, who probably would never have 
been a saint, if his father had not ordered him to lead a body of 
troops to the succor of a beleaguered cousin. Theobald declined, 
and at once went into a monastery. 

St. Walthen, one of the sons of the Earl of Huntingdon, and 



THE KNIGHTS WHO GREW "TIRED OF IT." 93 

Maud, daughter of Judith, which Judith was the niece of the Con- 
queror, only narrowly escaped being a gallant knight. As a boy, 
indeed, he used to build churches with his box of bricks, while 
his brothers built castles ; but at least he gave promise of being 
a true knight, and, once, not only accepted the gift of a ring from 
a lady, but wore the sparkling diamond on his finger. " Ah ! ah !" 
exclaimed the saucy courtiers, " Knight Walthen is beginning to 
have a tender heart for the ladies !" Poor Walthen ! he called 
this a devil's chorus, tossed the ring into the fire, broke the lady's 
heart, and went into a monastery for the remainder of his days. 
He escaped better than St. Clarus, who had a deaf ear and stone- 
blind eyes for the allurements of a lady of quality, and who only 
barely escaped assassination, at the hands of two ruffians hired by 
the termagant to kill the man who was above allowing her holy 
face to win from him a grin of admiration. But though I could 
fill a formidable volume with names of ci-devant knights who have 
turned saints, I will spare my readers, and conclude with the great 
name of St. Bernard. He did not, indeed, take up arms, but when 
he adopted a religious profession, he enjoyed the great triumph of 
inducing his uncle, all his brothers, knights, and simple officers, to 
follow his example. The uncle Gualdri, a famous swordsman and 
seigneur of Touillon, was the first who was convinced that Bernard 
was right. The two younger brothers of the latter, Bartholomew 
and Andrew, next knocked off their spurs and took to their bre- 
viary. Guy, the eldest brother, a married man, of wealth, broke 
up his household, sold his armor, sent his lady to a convent and 
his daughters to a nunnery, put on the cowl, and followed St. Ber- 
nard. Others of his family and many of his friends followed his 
example, with which I conclude my record of saints who have had 
any connection with arms. As for St. Bernard, I will say of him, 
that had he assumed the sword and been as merciless to his ene- 
mies as he was, in his character of abbot, without bowels of com- 
passion for an adversary whom he could crush by wordy argu- 
ment, he would have been the most terrible cavalier that ever sat 
in saddle ! 

Perhaps the most perfect cavalier who ever changed that dig- 
nity for the cowl, was the Chevalier de Ranee. Of him and his 
Trappist followers I will here add a few words. 



94 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

THE CHEVALIER DE RANCE AND THE TRAPPISTS. 

Be Ranee was born in 1626. He was of a ducal house, and 
the great Cardinal de Richelieu was his godfather. In his youth 
he was very sickly and scholastic. He was intended for the 
Church, held half a score of livings before he could speak — and 
when he could express his will, resolved to live only by his sword. 
He remained for a while neither priest nor swordsman, but simply 
the gayest of libertines. He projected a plan of knight-errantry, 
in society with all the young cavaliers, and abandoned the project 
to study astrology. For a period of some duration, he was half- 
knight, half-priest. He then received full orders, dressed like the 
most frivolous of marquises, seduced the Duchess de Montbazon, 
and absolved in others the sins which he himself practised. 
" Where are you going ?" said the Chevalier de Champvallon to 
him one day. " I have been preaching all the morning," said De 
Ranee, " like an angel, and I am going this afternoon to hunt like 
the very devil." He may be said to have been like those Mor- 
mons who describe their fervent selves as " Hell-bent on Heaven !" 

Nobody could ever tell whether he was soldier or priest, till 
death slew the Duchess de Montbazon. De Ranee unexpectedly 
beheld the corpse disfigured by the ravages of small-pox or mea- 
sles, and he was so shocked, that it drove him from the world to 
the cloister, where, as the reconstructor, rather than the founder, 
of the order of Trappists, he spent thirty-seven years — exactly as 
many as he had passed in the " world." 

The companions and followers of the chivalrous De Ranee claim 
a few words for themselves. The account will show in what strong 
contrasts the two portions of their lives consisted. They had 
learned obedience in their career of arms, but they submitted to a 
far more oppressive rule in their career as monks. Some century 
and a half ago there was published in Paris a dreadfully dreary 
series of volumes, entitled " Relations de la Vie et de la Mort de 
quelques Religieux de l'Abbaye de la Trappe." They consist 
chiefly of tracts, partly biographical and partly theological, unin- 
teresting in the main, but of interest as showing what noble sol- 
diers or terrible freebooters asked for shelter in, and endured the 
austerities of, La Trappe. I have alluded to the unreserved sub- 



THE KNIGHTS WHO GREW "TIRED OF IT." 95 

mission required at the hands of the brothers. The latter, accord- 
ing to the volumes which I have just named, were sworn to impart 
even their thoughts to the Abbot. They who thus delivered them- 
selves with least reserve appear to have been commanded in very 
bad Latin ; but their act of obedience was so dear to Heaven, that 
their persons became surrounded with a glory, which their less com- 
municative brethren, says the author naively, could not possibly 
gaze at for any length of time : — the which I implicitly believe. 

The candidates for admission included, without doubt, many 
very pious persons, but with them were degraded priests, with 
whom we have little to do, and ex-officers, fugitive men-at-arms, 
robbers who had lived by the sword, and murderers, of knightly 
degree, who had used their swords to the unrighteous slaying of 
others, and who sought safety within the cloisters of La Trappe. 
All that was asked of them was obedience. Where this failed it 
was compelled. Where it abounded it was praised. Next to it 
was humility. One brother, an ex-soldier reeking with blood, is 
lauded because he lived on baked apples, when his throat was too 
sore to admit of his swallowing more substantial food. Another 
brother, who had changed arms for the gown, is most gravely com- 
pared with Moses, because he was never bold enough to enter the 
pantry with sandals on his feet. Still, obedience was the first 
virtue eulogized — so eulogized that I almost suspect it to have 
been rare. It was made of so much importance, that the commu- 
nity were informed that all their faith, and all their works, without 
blind obedience to the superior, would fail in securing their salva- 
tion. Practical blindness was as strongly enjoined. He who used 
his eyes to least purpose, was accounted the better man. One ex- 
military brother did this in so praiseworthy a way, that in eight 
years he had never seen a fault in any of his brethren. 

It was not, however, this sort of blindness that De Ranee re- 
quired, for he encouraged the brethren to bring accusations against 
each other. Much praise is awarded to a brother who never looked 
at the roof of his own cell. Laudation more unmeasured is pour- 
ed upon another faithful knight of the new order of self-negation, 
who was so entirely unaccustomed to raise his eyes from the ground, 
that he was not aware of the erection of a new chapel in the gar- 
den, until he broke his head against the wall. 



96 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

On one occasion the Duchess de Guiche and an eminent prelate 
visited the monastery together. After they had left, a monk en- 
tered the Abbot's apartment, threw himself at the feet of his 
superior, and begged permission to confess a great crime. He 
was told to proceed. 

" When the lady and the bishop were here just now," said he, 
" I dared to raise my eyes, and they rested upon the face — " 

" Not of the lady, thou reprobate !" exclaimed the Abbot. 

" Oh no," calmly rejoined the monk, " but of the old bishop !" 
A course of bread and water was needed to work expiation for 
the crime. 

Some of the brethren illustrated what they meant by obedience 
and humility, after a strange fashion. For example, there was 
one who having expressed an inclination to return to the world, 
was detained against his will. His place was in the kitchen, and 
the devastation he committed among the crockery was something 
stupendous — and probably not altogether unintentional. He was 
not only continually fracturing the delf earthenware dishes, but 
was incessantly running from the kitchen to the Abbot, from the 
Abbot to the Prior, from the Prior to the Sub-Prior, and from the 
Sub-Prior to the Master of the Novices to confess his fault. 
Thence he returned to the kitchen again, once more to smash 
whole crates of plates, following up the act with abundant confes- 
sions, and deriving evident enjoyment, alike in destroying the 
property, and assailing with noisy apologies the governing powers 
whom he was resolved to inspire with a desire of getting rid 
of him. 

In spite of forced detention there was a mock appearance of 
liberty at monthly assemblies. The brethren were asked if there 
was anything in the arrangement of the institution and its rules 
which they desired to see changed. As an affirmative reply, how- 
ever, would have brought "penance" and "discipline" on him who 
made it, the encouraging phrase that " They had only to speak," 
by no means rendered them loquacious, and every brother, by his 
silence, expressed his content. 

If death was the suicidal object of many, the end appears to 
have been generally attained with a speedy certainty. The supe- 
riors and a few monks reached an advanced age ; only a few of 



THE KNIGHTS WHO GREW "TIRED OF IT." 97 

the brethren died old men. Consumption, inflammation of the 
lungs, and abscess (at memory of the minute description of which 
the very heart turns sick), carried off the victims with terrible 
rapidity. Men entered, voluntarily or otherwise, in good health. 
If they did so, determined to achieve suicide, or were driven in 
by the government with a view of putting them to death, the end 
soon came, and was, if we may believe what we read, welcomed 
with alacrity. After rapid, painful, and unresisted decay, the suf- 
ferer saw as his last hour approached, the cinders strewn on the 
ground in the shape of a cross ; a thin scattering of straw was 
made upon the cinders, and that was the death-bed upon which 
every Trappist expired. The body was buried in the habit of the 
order, as some knights have been in panoply, without coffin or 
shroud, and was borne to the grave in a cloth upheld by a few 
brothers. If it fell into its last receptacle with huddled-up limbs, 
De Ranee would leap into the grave and dispose the unconscious 
members, so as to make them assume an attitude of repose. 

A good deal of confusion appears to have distinguished the rules 
of nomenclature. In many instances, where the original names 
had impure or ridiculous significations, the change was advisable. 
But I can not see how a brother became more cognisable as a 
Christian, by assuming the names of Palemon, Achilles, Moses, or 
even Dorothy. Theodore, I can understand ; but Dorothy, though 
it bears the same meaning, seems to me but an indifferent name 
for a monk, even in a century when the male Montmorencies de- 
lighted in the name of " Anne." 

None of the monks were distinguished by superfluous flesh. 
Some of these ex-soldiers were so thin-skinned, that when sitting 
on hard chairs, their bones fairly rubbed through their very slight 
epidermis. They who so suffered, and joyfully, were held up as 
bright examples of godliness. 

There is matter for many a sigh in these saffron-leaved and 
worm-eaten tomes, whose opened pages are now before me. I find 
a monk who has passed a sleepless night through excess of pain. 
To test his obedience, he is ordered to confess that he has slept 
well and suffered nothing. The submissive soldier obeys his gen- 
eral's command. Another confesses his readiness, as Dr. Newman 
has done, to surrender any of his own deliberately-made convic- 

7 



98 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

tions at the bidding of his superior. " I am wax,", he says, " for 
you to mould me as you will ;" and his unreserved surrender of 
himself is commended with much windiness of phrase. A third, 
inadvertently remarking that his scalding broth is over-salted, 
bursts into tears at the enormity of the crime he has committed 
by thus complaining; whereupon praise falls upon him more 
thickly than the salt did into his broth : " Yes," says the once 
knight, now abbot, " it is not praying, nor watching, nor repent- 
ance, that is alone asked of you by God, but humility and obedience 
therewith ; and first obedience." 

To test the fidelity of those professing to have this humility and 
obedience, the most outrageous insults were inflicted on such as in 
the world had been reckoned the most high-spirited. It is averred 
that these never failed. The once testy soldier, now passionless 
monk, kissed the sandal raised to kick, and blessed the hand lifted 
to smite him. A proud young officer of mousquetaires, of whom 
I have strong suspicions that he had embezzled a good deal of his 
majesty's money, acknowledged that he was the greatest criminal 
that ever lived ; but he stoutly denied the same when the officers 
of the law visited the monastery and accused him of fraudulent 
practices. This erst young warrior had no greater delight than 
in being permitted to clean the spittoons in the chapel, and pro- 
vide them with fresh sawdust. Another, a young marquis and 
chevalier, performed with eestacy servile offices of a more disgust- 
ing character. This monk was the flower of the fraternity. He 
was for ever accusing himself of the most heinous crimes, not one 
of which he had committed, or was capable of committing. " He 
represented matters so ingeniously," says De Ranee, who on this 
occasion is the biographer, " that without lying, he made himself 
pass for the vile wretch which in truth he was not." He must 
have been like that other clever individual who " lied like truth." 

When I say that he was the flower of the fraternity, I probably 
do some wrong to the Chevalier de Santin, who under the name 
of Brother Palemon, was undoubtedly the chief pride of La 
Trappe. He had been an. officer in the army ; without love for 
God, regard for man, respect for woman, or reverence for law. In 
consequence of a rupture between Savoy and France, he lost an 
annuity on which he had hitherto lived. As his constitution was 



THE KNICxHTS WHO GREW " TIBED OF IT." 99 

considerably shattered, he at the same time took to reading. He 
was partially converted by perusing the history of Joseph ; and 
he was finally perfected by seeing the dead body of a very old 
and very ugly monk, assume the guise and beauty of that of a 
young man. 

This was good ground for conversion ; but the count — for the 
chevalier of various orders was of that degree by birth — the count 
had been so thorough a miscreant in the world, that they who lived 
in the latter declined to believe in the godliness of Brother Pale- 
mon. Thereupon he was exhibited to all comers, and he gave 
ready replies to all queries put to him by his numerous visiters. 
All France, grave and gay, noble and simple, flocked to the spec- 
tacle. At the head of them was that once sovereign head of the 
Order of the Garter, James II., with his illegitimate son, from 
whom is descended the French ducal family of Fitz-James. The 
answers of Palemon to his questioners edified countless crowds. 
He shared admiration with another ex-military brother, who guile- 
lessly told the laughing ladies who flocked to behold him, that he 
had sought refuge in the monastery because his sire had wished 
him to marry a certain lady ; but that his soul revolted at the 
idea of touching even the finger-tips of one of a sex by the first 
of whom the world was lost. The consequent laughter was 
immense. 

From this it is clear that there were occasionally gay doings at 
the monastery, and that those at least who had borne arms, were 
not addicted to close their eyes in the presence of ladies. Among 
the most remarkable of the knightly members of the brotherhood, 
was a certain Robert Graham, whose father, Colonel Graham, was 
first cousin to Montrose. Robert was born, we are told, in the 
" Chateau de Rostourne," a short league (it is added by way of 
help, I suppose, to perplexed travellers), from Edinburgh. By 
his mother's side he was related to the Earl of Perth, of whom the 
Trappist biographer says, that he was even more illustrious for 
his piety, and for what he suffered for the sake of religion, than 
by his knighthood, his viceroyship, or his offices of High Chan- 
cellor of England, and " Governor of the Prince of Wales, now 
(1716) rightful king of Great Britain." The mother of Robert, 
a zealous protestant, is spoken of as having " as much piety as one 



100 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

can have in a false religion." In spite of her teaching, however, 
the young Eobert early exhibited an inclination for the Romish 
religion; and at ten years of age, the precocious boy attended 
mass in the chapel of Holyrood, to the great displeasure of his 
mother. On his repeating his visit, she had him soundly whipped 
by his tutor ; but the young gentleman declared that the process 
could not persuade him to embrace Presbyterianism. He accord- 
ingly rushed to the house of Lord Perth, " himself a recent con- 
vert from the Anglican Church," and claimed his protection. 
After some family arrangements had been concluded, the youthful 
protege was formally surrendered to the keeping of Lord Perth, 
by his mother, and not without reluctance. His father gave him 
up with the unconcern of those Gallios who care little about 
questions of religion. 

Circumstances compelled the earl to leave Scotland, when 
Robert sojourned with his mother at the house of her brother, a 
godly protestant minister. Here he showed the value of the in- 
structions he had received at the hands of Lord Perth and his 
Romish chaplain, by a conduct which disgusted every honest man, 
and terrified every honest maiden, in all the country round. His 
worthy biographer is candid enough to say that Robert, in falling 
off from Popery, did not become a protestant, but an atheist. 
The uncle turned him out of his house. The prodigal repaired 
to London, where he rioted prodigally ; thence he betook himself 
to France, and he startled even Paris with the bad renown of his 
evil doings. On his way thither through Flanders, he had had a 
moment or two of misgiving as to the wisdom of his career, and 
he hesitated while one might count twenty, between the counsel 
of some good priests, and the bad example of some Jacobite sol- 
diers, with whom he took service. The latter prevailed, and when 
the chevalier Robert appeared at the court of St Germains, Lord 
Perth presented to the fugitive king and queen there, as accom- 
plished a scoundrel as any in Christendom. 

There was a show of decency at the exiled court, and respect 
for religion. Young Graham adapted himself to the consequent 
influences. He studied French, read the lives of the saints, en- 
tered the seminary at Meaux, and finally reprofessed the Romish 
religion. He was now seized with a desire to turn hermit, but 



THE KNIGHTS WHO GREW "TIRED OF IT." 101 

accident having taken him to La Trappe, the blase libertine felt 
himself reproved by the stern virtue exhibited there, and, in a 
moment of enthusiasm, he enrolled himself a postulant, bade fare- 
well to the world, and devoted himself to silence, obedience, humil- 
ity, and austerity, with a perfectness that surprised alike those who 
saw and those who heard of it. Lord Perth opposed the reception 
of Robert in the monastery. Thereon arose serious difficulty, and 
therewith the postulant relapsed into sin. He blasphemed, reviled 
his kinsmen, swore oaths that set the whole brotherhood in speech- 
less terror, and finally wrote a letter to his old guardian, so 
crammed with fierce and unclean epithets, that the abbot refused 
permission to have it forwarded. The excitement which followed 
brought on illness ; with the latter, came reflection and sorrow. 
At length all difficulties vanished, and ultimately, on the eve of All 
Saints, 1699, Robert Graham became a monk, and changed his 
name for that of Brother Alexis. King James visited him, and 
was much edified by the spiritual instruction vouchsafed him by 
the second cousin of the gallant Montrose. The new monk was 
so perfect in obedience that he would not in winter throw a crumb 
to a half-starved sparrow, without first applying for leave from his 
spiritual superior. " Indeed," says his biographer, " I could tell 
you a thousand veritable stories about him ; but they are so extra- 
ordinary that I do not suppose the world would believe one of 
them." The biographer adds, that Alexis, after digging and cutting 
wood all day ; eating little, drinking less, praying incessantly, and 
neither washing nor unclothing himself, lay down ; but to pass the 
night without closing his eyes in sleep ! He was truly a brother 
Vigilantius. 

The renown of his conversion had many influences. The father 
of Alexis, Colonel Graham, embraced Romanism, and the colonel 
and an elder son, who was already a Capuchin friar, betook them- 
selves to La Trappe, where the reception of the former into the 
church was marked by a double solemnity — De Ranee dying as 
the service was proceeding. The wife of Colonel Graham is said 
to have left Scotland on the receipt of the above intelligence, to 
have repaired to France, and there embrace the form of faith fol- 
lowed by her somewhat facile husband. There is, however, great 
doubt on this point. 



102 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

The fate of young Robert Graham was similar to that of most 
of the Trappists. The deadly air, the hard work, the watchings, 
the scanty food, and the uncleanliness which prevailed, soon slew 
a man who was as useless to his fellow-men in a convent, as he 
had ever been in the world. His confinement was, in fact, a swift 
suicide. Consumption seized on the poor boy, for he was still but 
a boy, and his rigid adherence to the severe discipline of the place, 
only aided to develop what a little care might have easily checked. 
His serge gown clove to the carious bones which pierced through 
his diseased skin. The portions of his body on which he immova- 
bly lay, became gangrened, and nothing appears to have been 
done by way of remedy. He endured all with patience, and looked 
forward to death with a not unaccountable longing. The " infirm- 
ier" bade him be less eager in pressing forward to the grave. — "I 
will now pray God," said the nursing brother, a that he will be 
pleased to save you." — " And I," said Alexis, " will ask him not 
to heed you." Further detail is hardly necessary : suffice it to say 
that Robert Graham died on the 21st May, 1701, little more than 
six months after he had entered the monastery, and at the early 
age of twenty-two years. The father and brother also died in 
France, and so ended the chivalrous cousins of the chivalrous 
Montrose. 

The great virtue inculcated at La Trappe, was one of the cher- 
ished virtues of old chivalry, obedience to certain rules. But there 
was no excitement in carrying it out. Bodily suffering was en- 
countered by a knight, for mere glory's sake. At La Trappe it 
was accounted as the only means whereby to escape Satan. The 
knight of the cross purchased salvation by the sacrifice of his life ; 
the monk of La Trappe, by an unprofitable suicide. With both 
there was doubtless the one great hope common to all Christians ; 
but that great hope, so fortifying to the knight, seemed not to re- 
lieve the Trappist of the fear that Satan was more powerful than 
the Redeemer. "When once treating this subject at greater length, 
I remarked that there was a good moral touching Satan in Cuvier's 
dream, and the application of which might have been profitable to 
men like these monks. The great philosopher just named, once 
saw, in his sleep, the popular representative of the great enemy of 
man. The fiend approached with a loudly-expressed determination 



THE KNIGHTS WHO GREW "TIRED OP IT." 103 

to " eat him." " Eat me !" exclaimed Cuvier, examining him the 
while with the eye of a naturalist. " Eat me ! Horns ! Hoofs !" 
he added, scanning him over. "Horns? Hoofs? Graminiv- 
orous ! needn't be afraid of you !" 

And now let us get back from the religious orders of men to 
chivalrous orders of ladies. It is quite time to exclaim, Place aux 
Dames ! 



104 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 



FEMALE KNIGHTS AND JEANNE DARC. 

Mein ist der Helm, tiud mir gehort er zu. — Schiller. 

" Orders for ladies" have been favorite matters with both Kings 
and Queens, Emperors and Empresses. The Austrian Empress, 
Eleanora de Gonzague, founded two orders, which admitted only 
ladies as members. The first was in commemoration of the mirac- 
ulous preservation of a particle of the true cross, which escaped 
the ravages of a fire which nearly destroyed the imperial residence, 
in 1668. Besides this Order of the Cross, the same Empress in- 
stituted the Order of the Slaves of Virtue. This was hardly a 
complimentary title, for a slave necessarily implies a compulsory 
and unwilling servant. The number of members were limited to 
thirty, and these were required to be noble, and of the Romish re- 
ligion. The motto was, Sole ubique triumphat ; which may have 
implied that she only who best served virtue, was likely to profit 
by it. This was not making a very exalted principle of virtue it- 
self. It was rather placing it in the point of view wherein it was 
considered by Pamela, who was by far too calculating a young 
lady to deserve all the eulogy that has been showered upon her. 

Another Empress of Germany, Elizabeth Christiana, founded, 
in the early part of the last century, at Vienna, an Order of Neigh- 
borly Love. It consisted of persons of both sexes ; but nobody 
was accounted a neighbor who was not noble. With regard to 
numbers, it was unlimited. The motto of the order was Amor 
Proximi ; a motto which exactly characterized the feelings of 
Queen Guinever for any handsome knight who happened to be 
her neighbor for the nonce. " Proximus" at the meetings of the 
order was, of course, of that convenient gender whereby all the 
members of the order could profit by its application. They might 



FEMALE KNIGHTS AND JEANNE DARC. 105 

have had a particularly applicable song, if they had only possessed 
a Beranger to sing as the French lyrist has done. 

There was also in Germany an order for ladies only, that was 
of a very sombre character. It was the Order of Death's Head ; 
and was founded just two centuries ago, by a Duke of Wirtemburg, 
who decreed that a princess of that house should always be at the 
head of it. The rules bound ladies to an observance of conduct 
which they were not likely to observe, if the rule of Christianity 
was not strong enough to bind them ; and probably many fair ladies 
who wore the double cross, with the death's head pending from 
the lower one, looked on the motto of "Memento Mori," as a re- 
minder to daring lovers who dared to look on them. 

France had given us, in ladies' orders, first, the Order of the 
Cordeliere, founded by that Anne of Brittany who brought her in- 
dependent duchy as a dower to Charles VIII. of France, and who 
did for the French court what Queen Charlotte effected for that 
of England, at a much later period. Another Anne, of Austria, 
wife of Louis XIII., and some say of Cardinal Mazarin also, found- 
ed, for ladies, the Order of the Celestial Collar of the Holy Rosary. 
The members consisted of fifty young ladies of the first families in 
France ; and they all wore, appended to other and very charming 
insignia hanging from the neck, a portrait of St. Dominic, who 
found himself in the best possible position for instilling all sorts of 
good principles into a maiden's bosom. 

The Order of the Bee was founded a century and a half ago by 
Louisa de Bourbon, Duchess of Maine. The ensign was a medal, 
with the portrait of the duchess on one side, and the figure of a 
bee, with the motto,' Je suis petite, mais mes piqueures sont pro- 
fondes, on the other. 

In Russia, Peter the Great founded the Order of St. Catherine, 
in honor of his wife, and gave as its device, Pour V amour et la 
Jidelite envers la patrie. It was at first intended for men, but was 
ultimately made a female order exclusively. A similar change 
was found necessary in the Spanish Order of the Lady of Mercy, 
founded in the thirteenth century by James, King of Aragon. 
There were other female orders in Spain, and the whole of them 
had for their object the furtherance of religion, order, and virtue. 
In some cases, membership was conferred in acknowledgment of 



106 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

merit. Who forgets Miss Jane Porter in her costume and insignia 
of a lady of one of the orders of Polish female chivalry — and who 
is ignorant that Mrs. Otway has been recently decorated by the 
Queen of Spain with the Order of Maria Louisa ? 

The Order of St. Ulrica, in Sweden, was founded in 1734, in 
honor of a lady, the reigning Queen, and to commemorate the lib- 
erty which Sweden had acquired and enjoyed from the period of 
her accession. Two especial qualities were necessary in the can- 
didates for knighthood in this order. It was necessary that a pub- 
lic tribunal should declare that they were men of pure public spirit ; 
and it was further required of them to prove that in serving the 
country, they had never been swayed by motives of private inter- 
est. When the order was about to be founded, not less than five 
hundred candidates appeared to claim chivalric honor. Of these, 
only fifty were chosen, and decree was made that the number of 
knights should never exceed that amount. It was an unnecessary 
decree, if the qualifications required were to be stringently de- 
manded. But, in the conferring of honors generally, there has 
often been little connection between cause and effect ; as, for in- 
stance, after Major-General Simpson had failed to secure the vic- 
tory which the gallantry of our troops had put in his power at the 
Redan, the home government was so delighted, that they made 
field-marshals of two very old gentlemen. The example was not 
lost on the King of the Belgians. He, too, commemorated the fall 
of Sebastopol by enlarging the number of his knights. He could 
not well scatter decorations among his army, for that has been 
merely a military police, but he made selection of an equally de- 
structive body, and named eighteen doctors — Knights of St. 
Leopold. 

These orders of later institution appear to have forgotten one 
of the leading principles of knighthood — love for the ladies — but 
perhaps this is quite as well. When Louis II., Duke of Bourbon, 
instituted the Order of the Golden Shield, he was by no means so 
forgetful. He enjoined his knights to honor the ladies above all, 
and never permit any one to slander them with impunity ; " be- 
cause," said the good duke, " after God, we owe everything to the 
labors of the ladies, and all the honor that man can acquire." One 
portion of which assertion may certainly defy contradiction. 



FEMALE KNIGHTS AND JEANNE DARC. 107 

The most illustrious of female knights, however, is, without dis- 
pute, the Maid of Orleans. Poor Jeanne Dare seems to me to 
have been an illustrious dupe and an innocent victim. Like Char- 
lotte Corday, ihe calamities of her country weighed heavily upon 
her spirits, and her consequent eager desire to relieve them, caused 
her to be marked as a fitting instrument for a desired end. Poor 
Charlotte Corday commissioned herself for the execution of the 
heroic deed which embellishes her name — Jeanne Dare was evi- 
dently commissioned by others. 

The first step taken by Jeanne to obtain access to the Dauphin, 
was to solicit the assistance of the proud De Baudricourt, who re- 
sided not far from the maid's native place, Domremy. However 
pious the young girl may have been, De Baudricourt was not the 
man to give her a. public reception, had not some foregone conclu- 
sion accompanied it. She needed his help to enable her to pro- 
ceed to Chinon. The answer of the great chief was that she should 
not be permitted to go there. The reply of the maid, who was 
always uncommonly " smart" 'in her answers, was that she would 
go to Chinon, although she were forced to crawl the whole way 
on her knees. She did go, and the circumstances of a mere young 
girl, who was in the habit of holding intercourse with angels and 
archangels, thus overcoming, as it were, the most powerful person- 
age in the district, was proof enough to the common mind, as to 
whence she derived her strength and authority. The corps of 
priests by whom she was followed, as soon as her divine mission 
was acknowledged or invented by the court, lent her additional 
influence, and sanctified in her own mind, her doubtless honest en- 
thusiasm. The young girl did all to which she pledged herself, 
and in return, was barbarously treated by both friend and foe, and 
was most hellishly betrayed by the Church, under whose benedic- 
tion she had raised her banner. She engaged to relieve Orleans 
from the terrible English army which held it in close siege, and 
she nobly kept her engagement. It may be noticed that the first 
person slain in this siege, was a young lady named Belle, and the 
fair sex thus furnished the first victim, as well as the great con- 
queror, in this remarkable conflict. 

I pass over general details, in order to have the more space to 
notice particular illustrative circumstances touching our female 



108 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

warrior. Jeanne, it must be allowed, was extremely bold of asser- 
tion as well as smart in reply. She would have delighted a Swe- 
denborgian by the alacrity with which she protested that she held 
intercourse with spirits from Heaven and prophets of old. Noth- 
ing was so easy as to make her believe so ; and she was quite as 
ready to deny the alleged fact when her clerical accusers, in the 
day of her adversity, declared that such belief was a suggestion of 
the devil. I think there was some humor and a little reproach in 
the reply by Jeanne, that she would maintain or deny nothing hwl 
as she was directed by the Church. 

Meanwhile, during her short but glorious career, she manifested 
true chivalrous spirit. She feared no man, not even the brave 
Dunois. " Bastard, bastard !" said she to him on one occasion, 
" in the name of God, hear me ; I command you to let me know 
of the arrival of Fastolf as soon as it takes place ; for, hark ye, if 
he passes without my knowledge, I give you my word, you shall 
lose your head." And thereon she turned to her dinner of dry 
bread and wine-and- water — half a pint of the first to two pints of 
the last, with the quiet air of a person able and determined to real- 
ize every menace. 

It is very clear that her brother knights, while they profited by 
her services, and obeyed (with some reluctance) her orders, nei- 
ther thought nor spoke over-well of her. Their comments were 
not complimentary to a virgin reputation, which a jury of prin- 
cesses, with a queen for a forewoman, had pronounced unblem- 
ished. She even risked her prestige over the common rank and 
file, but generally by measures which resulted in strengthening it. 
Thus, on taking the Fort of the Augustins from the English, she 
destroyed all the rich tilings and lusty wine she found there, lest 
the men should be corrupted by indulgence therein.^ It may be 
remembered that Gustavus Vasa highly disgusted his valiant 
Dalecarlians by a similar exhibition of healthy discipline. 

The Maid undoubtedly placed the work of fighting before the 
pleasure of feasting. When she was about to issue from her lodg- 
ings, to head the attack against the bastion of the Tourelles, where 
she prophesied she would be wounded, her host politely begged of 
her to remain and partake of a dish of freshly-caught shad. It 
was the 7th of May, and shad was just in season ; the Germans 



FEMALE KNIGHTS AND JEANNE DARC. 109 

call it distinctively " the May-fish." Jeanne resisted the tempta- 
tion for the moment. " Keep the fish till to-night," said she, " till 
I have come back from the fray ; for I shall bring a Goden [a 
* God d — n,' or Englishman] with me to partake of my supper." 

She was not more ready of tongue than she was quick of eye. 
An instance of the latter may be found in an incident before Jar- 
geau. She was reconnoitring the place at a considerable distance. 
The period was more than a century and a half before Hans Lip- 
pershey, the Middleburg spectacle-maker, had invented, and still 
more before Galileo had improved, the telescope. The Duke 
d'Alencon was with Jeanne, and she bade him step aside, as the 
enemy were pointing a gun at him. The Duke obeyed, for he 
knew her acuteness of vision ; the gun was fired, and De Lude, a 
gentleman of Anjou, standing in a line with the spot which had 
been occupied by the Duke, was slain — which must have been 
very satisfactory to the Duke ! 

I have said that some of the knights had but a scanty respect 
for the gallant Maid. A few, no doubt, objected to the assumption 
of heavenly inspiration on her part. One, at least, was not so 
particular. I allude to the Baron De Bichemond, who had been 
exiled from court for the little misdemeanor of having assassinated 
Cannes de Beaulieu. The Baron had recovered his good name by 
an actively religious exercise, manifested by his hunting after wizards 
and witches, and burning them alive, to the delight and edification 
of dull villagers. This pious personage paid a visit to Jeanne, 
hoping to obtain, by her intercession, the royal permission to have 
a share in the war. The disgraced knight, who brought with him 
a couple of thousand men, when these were most wanted, was not 
likely to meet with a refusal of service, and the permission sought 
for was speedily granted. Jeanne playfully alluded to her own 
supernatural inspiration and the Baron's vocation as " witch-finder." 
" Ah well," said De Bichemond, " with regard to yourself, I have 
only this to say, that it is difficult to say anything ; but if you are 
from Heaven, it is not I who shall be afraid of you ; and if you 
come from the devil, I do not fear even him, who, in such case, 
sends you." Thereupon, they laughed merrily, and began to talk 
of the next day's battle. 

That battle was fought upon the field of Patay, where the gal- 



110 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

lant Talbot was made prisoner by the equally gallant Saintrailles. 
When the great English commander was brought into the pres- 
ence of Jeanne, he was good-humoredly asked if he had expected 
such a result the day before. " It is the fortune of war," philo- 
sophically exclaimed the inimitable John ; and thereby he made a 
soldier's comment, winch has often since been in the mouths of the 
valiant descendants of the French knights who heard it uttered, 
and which is frequently quoted as being of Gallic origin. But, 
again, I think that " fortuna belli" was not an uncommon phrase, 
perhaps, hi old days before the French language was yet spoken. 

And here, talking of origin, let me notice a circumstance of some 
interest. Jeanne Dare is commonly described as Jeanne D'Arc, 
as though she had been ennobled. This, indeed, she was, by the 
King, but not by that name. To the old family name was added 
that of du Lys, in allusion to the Lily of France, which that family 
had served so well. The brothers of Jeanne, now Dare du Lys, 
entered the army. When Guise sent a French force into Scot- 
land, some gallant gentlemen of this name of Lys were among 
them. They probably settled in Caledonia, for the name is not an 
uncommon one there ; and there is a gallant major in the 48th who 
bears it, and who, perhaps, may owe his descent to the ennobled 
brothers of " The Maid of Orleans." 

Jeanne was not so affected as to believe that nobility was above 
the desert of her deeds. When her relatives, including her broth- 
ers, Peter and John, congratulated her and themselves on all that 
she had accomplished, her remark was : " My deeds are in truth 
those of a ministry ; but in as great truth never were greater read 
of by cleric, however profound he may be in all clerical learning." 
The degree of nobility allowed to the deserving girl was that of a 
countess. Her household consisted of a steward, almoner, squire, 
pages, " hand, foot, and chamber men," independently of the noble 
maidens who tended her, and who seem to have been equally 
served by three " valets de main, de pied, et de chambre." 

But short-lived was the glory ; no, I will not say that, let me 
rather remark that short-lived was the worldly splendor of the 
chivalrous my-lady countess. She had rendered all the service 
she could, when she fell wounded before Paris, and was basely 
abandoned for a while by her own party. She was rescued, ulti- 



FEMALE KNIGHTS AND JEANNE DARC. Ill 

mately, by D'Alencon, but only to be more disgracefully aban- 
doned on the one side, and evilly treated on the other. When as 
a bleeding captive she was rudely dragged from the field at Com- 
piegne ; church, court, and chivalry, ignobly abandoned the poor 
and brave girl who had served all three in turn. By all three she 
was now as fiercely persecuted ; and it may safely be said, that 
if the English were glad to burn her as a witch, to account for the 
defeat of the English and their allies, the French were equally 
eager to furnish testimony against her. 

Her indecision and vacillation after falling into the hands of her 
enemies, would seem to show that apart from the promptings of 
those who had guided her, she was but an ordinary personage. 
She, however, never lost heart, and her natural wit did not 
abandon her. "Was St. Michael naked when he appeared to 
you ?" was a question asked by one of the examining commission- 
ers. To which Jeanne replied, " Do you think heaven has not 
wherewith to dress him ?" " Had he any hair on his head ?" was 
the next sensible question. Jeanne answered it by another query, 
" Have the goodness to tell me," said she, " why Michael's head 
should have been shaved ?" It was easy, of course, to convict a 
prejudged and predoomed person, of desertion of her parents, of 
leading a vagabond and disreputable life, of sorcery, and finally, 
of heresy. She was entrapped into answers which tended to prove 
her culpability ; but disregarding at last the complicated web woven 
tightly around her, and aware that nothing could save her, the 
heart of the knightly maiden beat firmly again, and as a summary 
reply to all questions, she briefly and emphatically declared : " All 
that I have done, all that I do, I have done well, and do well to do 
it." In her own words, " Tout ce que j'ai fait, tout ce que je fais, 
j'ai bien fait, et fais bien de le faire ;" and it was a simply-dignified 
resume in presence of high-born ecclesiastics, who did not scruple 
to give the He to each other like common ploughmen, 

She was sentenced to death, and suffered the penalty, as being 
guilty of infamy, socially, morally, religiously, and politically. Not 
a finger was stretched to save her who had saved so many. Her 
murder is an indelible stain on two nations and one church ; not 
the less so that the two nations unite in honoring her memory, and 
that the church has pronounced her innocent, Never did gallant 



112 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

champion meet with such base ingratitude from the party raised 
by her means from abject slavery to triumph ; never was noble 
enemy so ignobly treated by a foe with Avhom, to acknowledge 
and admire valor, is next to the practice of it ; and never was 
staff selected by the church for its support, so readily broken and 
thrown into the fire when it had served its purpose. All the sor- 
row in the world can not wash out these terrible facts, but it is 
fitting that this sorrow should always accompany our admiration. 
And so, honored be the memory of the young girl of Orleans ! 

After all, it is a question whether our sympathies be not thrown 
away when we affect to feel for Jeanne Dare. M. Delepierre, the 
Belgian Secretary of Legation, has printed, for private circulation, 
his " Doute Historique." This work consists chiefly of official 
documents, showing that the " Maid" never suffered at all, but that 
some criminal having been executed in her place, she survived to 
be a pensioner of the government, a married lady, and the mother 
of a family ! The work in which these documents are produced, 
is not to be easily procured, but they who have any curiosity in 
the matter will find the subject largely treated in the Athenceum. 
This " Historical Doubt" brings us so closely in connection with 
romance, that we, perhaps, can not do better in illustrating our 
subject, than turn to a purely romantic subject, and see of what 
metal the champions of Christendom were made, with respect to 
chivalry. 



THE CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTENDOM. 113 



THE CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTENDOM GENERALLY 
AND HE OF ENGLAND IN PARTICULAR. 

" Are these things true ? 
Thousands are getting at them in the streets." 

Sejanus His Fall. 

I can hardly express the delight I feel as a biographer in the 
present instance, in the very welcome fact that no one knows any- 
thing about the parentage of St. George. If there had been a 
genealogical tree of the great champion's race, the odds, are that I 
should have got bewildered among the branches. As there is 
only much conjecture with a liberal allowance of assertion, the 
task is doubly easy, particularly as the matter itself is of the very 
smallest importance. 

The first proof that our national patron ever existed at all, ac- 
cording to Mr. Alban Butler, is that the Greeks reverenced him 
by the name of " the Great Martyr." Further proof of a some- 
what similar quality, is adduced in the circumstance that in Greece 
and in various parts of the Levant, there are or were dozens of 
churches erected in honor of the chivalrous saint ; that Georgia 
took the holy knight for its especial patron ; and that St. George, in 
full panoply, won innumerable battles for the Christians, by leading 
forward the reserves when the vanguard had been repulsed by the 
infidels, and the Christian generals were of themselves too indo- 
lent, sick, or incompetent, to do what they expected St. George to 
do for them. 

From the East, veneration for this name, and some imaginary 
person who once bore it, extended itself throughout the West. 
It is a curious fact, that long before England placed herself under 
the shield of this religious soldier, France had made selection of 
him, at least as a useful adjutant or aide-de-camp to St. Denis. 

8 



114 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

Indeed, our saint was at one time nearly monopolized by France. 
St. Clotilde, the wife of the first Christian king of France, raised 
many altars in his honor — a fact which has not been forgotten in 
the decorations and illustrative adornments of that splendid church 
which has just been completed in the Faubourg St. Germain, and 
which is at once the pride and glory of Paris. That city once 
possessed relics which were said to be those of St. George ; but 
of their whereabouts, no man now knows anything. We do, how- 
ever, know that the Normans brought over the name of the saint 
with them, as that of one in whose arm of power they trusted, 
whether in the lists or in battle. In this respect we, as Saxons, 
if we choose to consider ourselves as such, have no particular rea- 
son to be grateful to the saint, for his presence among us is a sym- 
bol of national defeat if not of national humiliation. Not above 
six centuries have, however, elapsed since the great council of 
Oxford appointed his feast to be kept as a holyday of lesser rank 
throughout England; and it is about five hundred years since 
Edward III. established the Order of the Garter, under the pa- 
tronage of this saint. This order is far more ancient than that of 
St. Michael, instituted by Louis XI. ; of the Golden Fleece, in- 
vented by that ' good' Duke Philip of Burgundy, who fleeced all 
who were luckless enough to come within reach of his ducal shears ; 
and of the Scottish Order of St. Andrew, which is nearly two 
centuries younger than that of St. George. Venice, Genoa, and 
Germany, have also instituted orders of chivalry in honor of this 
unknown cavalier. 

These honors, however, and a very general devotion prove noth- 
ing touching his birth, parentage, and education. Indeed, it is 
probably because nothing is known of either, that his more serious 
biographers begin with his decease, and write his history, which, 
like one of Zschokke's tales, might be inscribed " Alles Verkerht." 
They tell us that he suffered under Diocletian, in Nicomedia, and 
on the 23d of April. We are further informed that he was a 
Cappadocian — a descendant of those savagely servile people, who 
once told the Romans that they would neither accept liberty at the 
hands of Rome, nor tolerate it of their own accord. He was, it 
is said, of noble birth, and after the death of his father, resided 
with his mother in Palestine, on an estate which finally became 



THE CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTENDOM. 115 

his own. The young squire was a handsome and stalwart youth, 
and, like many of that profession, fond of a military life. His 
promotion must have been pretty rapid, for we find him, according 
to tradition, a tribune or colonel in the army at a very early age, 
and a man of much higher rank before he prematurely died. His 
ideas of discipline were good, for when the pagan emperor perse- 
cuted the Christians, George of Cappadocia resigned his commis- 
sion and appointments, and not till then, when he was a private 
man, did he stoutly remonstrate with his imperial ex-commander- 
in-chief against that sovereign's bloody edicts and fiercer cruelty 
against the Christians. This righteous boldness was barbarously 
avenged ; and on the day after the remonstrance the gallant soldier 
lost his head. Some authors add to this account that he was the 
" illustrious young man" who tore down the anti- Christian edicts, 
when they were first posted up in Nicomedia, a conjecture which, 
by the hagiographers is called "plausible," but which has no 
shadow of proof to give warrant for its substantiality. 

The reason why all knights and soldiers generally have had 
confidence in St. George, is founded, we are told, on the facts of 
his reappearance on earth at various periods, and particularly at 
the great siege of Antioch, in the times of the crusades. The 
Christians had been well nigh as thoroughly beaten as the Rus- 
sians at Silistria. They were at the utmost extremity, when a 
squadron was seen rushing down from a mountain defile, with three 
knights at its head, in brilliant panoply and snow-white scarfs. 
"Behold," cried Bishop Adhemar, " the heavenly succor which 
was promised to you ! Heaven declares for the Christians. The 
holy martyrs, George, Demetrius, and Theodore, come to fight for 
you." The effect was electrical. The Christian army rushed to 
victory, with the shout, " It is the will of God !" and the effect of 
the opportune appearance of the three chiefs and their squadron, 
who laid right lustily on the Saracens, was decisive of one of the 
most glorious, yet only temporarily productive of triumphs. 

TThen Richard I. was on his expedition against enemies of the 
same race, he too was relieved from great straits by a vision of 
St. George. The army, indeed, did not see the glorious and in- 
spiring sight, but the king affirmed that he did, which, in those 
credulous times was quite as well. In these later days men are 



116 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

less credulous, or saints are more cautious. . Thus the Muscovites 
assaulted Kars under the idea that St. Sergius was with them ; at 
all events, Pacha Williams, a good cause, and sinewy arms, were 
stronger than the Muscovite idea and St. Sergius to boot. 

Such, then, is the hagiography of our martial saint. Gibbon 
has sketched his life in another point of view — business-like, if not 
matter-of-fact. The terrible historian sets down our great patron 
as having been born in a fuller's shop in Cilicia, educated (perhaps) 
in Cappadocia, and as having so won promotion, when a young 
man, from his patrons, by the skilful exercise of his profession as 
a parasite, as to procure, through their influence, " a lucrative com- 
mission or contract to supply the army with bacon !" In this 
commissariat employment he is said to have exercised fraud and 
corruption, by which may be meant that he sent to the army bacon 
as rusty as an old cuirass, and charged a high price for a worthless 
article. In these times, when the name and character of St. 
George are established, it is to be hoped that Christian purveyors 
for Christian armies do not, in reverencing George the Saint, imi- 
tate the practices alleged against him as George the Contractor. 
It would be hard, indeed, if a modem contractor who sent foul hay 
to the cavalry, uneatable food to the army generally, or poisonous 
potted-meat to the navy, could shield himself under the name 
and example of St. George. Charges as heavy are alleged against 
him by Gibbon, who adds that the malversations of the pious rogue 
" were so notorious, that George was compelled to escape from the 
pursuit of justice." If he saved his fortune, it is allowed that he 
made shipwreck of his honor ; and he certainly did not improve 
his reputation if, as is alleged, he turned Arian. The career of 
our patron saint, as described by Gibbon, is startling. That writer 
speaks of the splendid library subsequently collected by George, 
but he hints that the volumes on history, rhetoric, philosophy, and 
theology, were perhaps as much proof of ostentation as of love for 
learning. That George was raised by the intrigues of a faction 
to the pastoral throne of Athanasius, in Alexandria, does not sur- 
prise us. Bishops were very irregularly elected in those early 
days, when men were sometimes summarily made teachers who 
needed instruction themselves ; as is the case in some enlightened 
districts at present. George displayed an imperial pomp in his 



THE CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTENDOM. 117 

archiepiscopal character, " but he still betrayed those vices of his 
base and servile extraction," yet was so impartial that he oppressed 
and plundered all parties alike. " The merchants of Alexandria/ 
says the historian of the " Decline and Fall," " were impoverished 
by the unjust and almost universal monopoly which he acquired 
of nitre, salt, paper, funerals, &c, and the spiritual father of a 
great people condescended to practise the vile and pernicious arts 
of an informer. He seems to have had as sharp an eye after the 
profit to be derived from burials, as a certain archdeacon, who 
thinks intramural burial of the dead a very sanitary measure for 
the living, and particularly profitable to the clergy. Thus the ex- 
ample of St. George would seem to influence very " venerable" as 
well as very " martial" gentlemen. The Cappadocian most espe- 
cially disgusted the Alexandrians by levying a house tax, of his 
own motion, and as he pillaged the pagan temples as well, all par- 
ties rose at length against the common oppressor, and " under the 
reign of Constantine he was expelled by the fury and justice of 
the people." He was restored only again to fall. The accession 
of Julian brought destruction upon the archbishop and many of 
his friends, who, after an imprisonment of three weeks, were 
dragged from their dungeons by a wild and cruel populace, and 
murdered in the streets. The bodies were paraded in triumph 
upon camels (as that of Conde was by his Catholic opponents, 
after the battle of Jarnac, on an ass), and they were ultimately 
cast into the sea. This last measure was adopted in order that, if 
the sufferers were to be accounted as martyrs, there should at least 
be no relics of them for men to worship. Gibbon thus concludes : 
" The fears of the Pagans were just, and their precautions inef- 
fectual. The meritorious death of the archbishop obliterated the 
memory of his life. The rival of Athanasius was dear and sacred 
to the Arians, and the seeming conversion of those sectaries intro- 
duced his worship into the bosom of the Catholic church. The 
odious stranger, disguising every circumstance of time and place, 
assumed the rank of a martyr, a saint, and a Christian hero ; and 
the infamous George of Cappadocia has been transformed into the 
famous St. George of England, the patron of arms, of chivalry, 
and of the garter." 

The romancers have treated St. George and his knightly con- 



118 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

fraternity after their own manner. As a sample of what reading 
our ancestors were delighted with, especially those who loved chiv- 
alric themes, I know nothing better than " The Famous History 
of the Seven Champions of Christendom, St. George of England, 
St. Denis of France, St. James of Spain, St. Anthony of "Italy, St. 
Andrew of Scotland, St. Patrick of Ireland, and St. David of 
Wales. Shewing their honourable battles by sea and land. Their 
tilts, justs, tournaments for ladies ; their combats with gyants, mon- 
sters, and dragons ; their adventures in foreign nations ; their en- 
chantments in the Holy Land; their knighthoods, prowess, and 
chivalry, in Europe, Africa, and Asia ; with their victories against 
the enemies of Christ ; also the true manner and places of their 
deaths, being seven tragedies, and how they came to be called the 
Seven Saints of Christendom." The courteous author or publish- 
er of the veracious details, prefaces them with a brief address " to 
all courteous readers," to whom " Richard Johnson wisheth increase 
of virtuous knowledge." " Be not," he says, " like the chattering 
cranes, nor Momus's mates that carp at everything. What the 
simple say, I care not. What the spiteful say, I pass not ; only 
the censure of the conceited," by which good Richard means the 
learned, "I stand unto ; that is the mark I aim at," — an address, 
it may be observed, which smacks of the Malaprop school ; but 
which seemed more natural to our ancestors than it does to us. 

For these readers Richard Johnson presents a very highly-spiced 
fare. He brings our patron saint into the world by a Cesarean 
operation performed by a witch, who stole him from his uncon- 
scious mother, and reared him up in a cave, whence the young 
knight ultimately escaped with the other champions whom the 
witch, now slain, had kept imprisoned. The champions, it may 
be observed, travel with a celerity that mocks the " Express," and 
rivals the despatch of the Electric Telegraph. They are scarcely 
departed from the seven paths which led from the brazen pillar, 
each in search of adventures, when they are all " in the thick of 
it," almost at the antipodes. A breath takes St. George from 
Coventry, his recovered home, after leaving the witch, to Egypt. 
At the latter place he slays that terrible dragon, which some think 
to imply the Arian overcoming the Athanasian, and rescues the 
Princess Sabra, in whose very liberal love we can hardly trace a 



THE CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTENDOM. 119 

symbol of the Church, although her antipathies are sufficiently 
strong to remind one of the odium theohgicum. George goes on 
performing stupendous feats, and getting no thanks, until he under- 
takes to slay a couple of lions for the Soldan of Persia, and gets 
clapped into prison, during seven years, for his pains. The biog- 
rapher I suspect, shut the knight up so long, in order to have an 
excuse to begin episodically with the life of St. Denis. 

The mystic number seven enters into all the principal divisions 
of the story. Thus, St. Denis having wandered into Thessaly 
was reduced to such straits as to live upon mulberries ; and these 
so disagreed with him that he became suddenly transformed into a 
hart ; a very illogical sequence indeed. But the mulberry tree 
was, in fact, Eglantius the King's daughter, metamorphosed for 
her pride. Seven years he thus remained ; at the end of which 
time, his horse, wise as any regularly-ordained physician, adminis- 
tered to him a decoction of roses which brought about the transfor- 
mation of both his master and his master's mistress into their 
u humane shapes." That they went to court sworn lovers may be 
taken as a matter of course. There they are left, in order to afford 
the author an opportunity of showing how St. James, having most 
unorthodoxically fallen in love with a Jewish maiden, was seven 
years dumb, in consequence. St. James, however, is a patient and 
persevering lover. If I had an ill-will against any one I would coun- 
sel him to read this very long-winded history, but being at peace 
with all mankind, I advise my readers to be content with learning 
that the apostolic champion and the young Jewess are ultimately 
united, and fly to Seville, where they reside in furnished lodgings, 
and lead a happy life ; — while the author tells of what befell to 
the doughty St. Anthony. 

This notable Italian is a great hand at subduing giants and 
ladies. We have a surfeit of combats and destruction, and love- 
making and speechifying, in this champion's life ; and when we 
are compelled to leave him travelling about with a Thracian lady, 
who accompanies him, in a theatrical male dress, and looks in it 
like the Duchess — at least, like Miss Farebrother, in the dashing 
white sergeant of the Forty Thieves — we shake our head at St. 
Anthony and think how very unlike he is to his namesake in the 
etching by Callot, where the fairest of sirens could not squeeze a 
sicrh from the anehoritp'c wrinklpd bpnrt. 



120 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

"While they are travelling about in the rather disreputable fash- 
ion above alluded to, we come across St. Andrew of Scotland, who 
has greater variety of adventure than any other of the champions. 
"With every hour there is a fresh incident. Now he is battling 
with spirits, now struggling with human foes, and anon mixed up, 
unfavorably, with beasts. At the end of all the frays, there is — 
we need hardly say it — a lady. The bonny Scot was not likely 
to be behind his fellow-champions in this respect. Nay, St. An- 
drew has six of them, who had been swans, and are now natural 
singing lasses. What sort of a blade St. Andrew was may be 
guessed by the " fact," that when he departed from the royal court, 
to which he had conducted the half dozen, ladies, they all eloped 
in a body, after him. There never was so dashing a hero dreamed 
of by romance — though a rhymer has dashed off his equal in 
wooing, and Burns's " Finlay" is the only one that may stand the 
parallel. 

When the six Thracian ladies fall into the power of " thirty 
bloody-minded satyrs," who so likely, or so happy to rescue them 
as jolly St. Patrick. How he flies to the rescue, slays one satyr, 
puts the rest to flight, and true as steel, in love or friendship, takes 
the half dozen damsels under his arm, and swings singingly along 
with them in search of the roving Scot ! As for St. David, all this 
while, he had not been quite so triumphant, or so tried, as his fellows. 
He had fallen into bad company, and "four beautiful damsels 
wrapped the drousie champion in a sheet of fine Arabian silk, and 
conveyed him into a cave, placed in the middle of a garden, where 
they laid him on a bed, more softer than the down of Culvers." 
In this agreeable company the Welsh champion wiled away his 
seven years. It was pleasant but not proper. But if the author 
had not thus disposed of him, how do you think he would ever 
have got back to St. George of England ? The author indeed ex- 
hibits considerable skill, for he brings St. George and St. David 
together, and the first rescues the second from ignoble thraldom, 
and what is worse, from the most prosy enchanter I ever met with 
in history, and who is really not enchanting at all. This done, 
George is off to Tripoli. 

There, near there, or somewhere else, for the romances are 
dreadfully careless in their topography, he falls in with his old love 



THE CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTENDOM. 121 

Sabra, married to a Moorish King. If George is perplexed at 
this, seeing that the lady had engaged to remain an unmarried 
maiden till he came to wed her, he is still more so when she informs 
him that she has, in all essentials, kept her word, " through the 
secret virtue of a golden chain steeped in tiger's blood, the which 
she wore seven times double about her ivory neck." St. George 
does not know what to make of it, but as on subsequently encoun- 
tering two lions, Sabra, while he was despatching one, kept the 
other quietly with its head resting on her lap, the knight declared 
himself perfectly satisfied, and they set out upon their travels, lov- 
ingly together. 

By the luckiest chance, all the wandering knights and their ladies 
met at the court of a King of Greece, who is not, certainly, to be 
heard of in Gillies' or Goldsmith's history. The scenery is now 
on a magnificent scale, for there is* a regal wedding on foot, and 
tournaments, and the real war of Heathenism against all Christen- 
dom. As the Champions of Christendom have as yet done little 
to warrant them in assuming the appellation, one would suppose 
that the time had now arrived when they were to give the world 
a taste of their quality in that respect. But nothing of the sort 
occurs. The seven worthies separate, each to his own country, in 
order to prepare for great deeds ; but none are done for the benefit 
of Christianity, unless indeed we are to conclude that when George 
and Sabra travelled together, and he overcame all antagonists, and 
she inspired with love all beholders; — he subdued nature itself 
and she ran continually into danger, from which he rescued her ; 
— and that when, after being condemned to the stake, the young 
wife gave birth to three babes in the wood, and was at last crowned 
Queen of Egypt, something is meant by way of allegory, in refer- 
ence to old church questions, and in not very clear elucidation as 
to how these questions were beneficially affected by the Champions 
of Christendom! 

I may add that when Sabra was crowned Queen of Egypt, every 
one was ordered to be merry, on pain of death ! It is further to 
be observed there is now much confusion, and that the confusion 
by no means grows less as the story thunders on. The Cham- 
pions and the three sons of St. George are, by turns, East, West, 
North, and South, either pursuing each other, or suddenly and un- 



122 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

expectedly encountering, like the principal personges in a panto- 
mime. Battles, love-making, and shutting up cruel and reprobate 
magicians from the " humane eye," are the chief events, but to 
every event there are dozens of episodes, and each episode is as 
confusing, dazzling, and bewildering as the trunk from which it 
hangs. 

St. George, however, is like a greater champion than himself; 
and when he is idle and in Italy, he does precisely what Nelson 
did in the same place — fall in love with a lady, and cause endless 
mischief in consequence. By this time, however, Johnson begins 
to think, rightly, that his readers have had enough of it, and that 
it is time to dispose of his principal characters. These too, are so 
well disposed to help him, that when the author kills St. Patrick, 
the saint burys himself ! In memory of his deeds, of which we 
have heard little or nothing, some are accustomed to honor him, 
says Mr. Johnson — "wearing upon their hats, each of them, a 
cross of red silk, in token of his many adventures under the Chris- 
tian Cross." So that the shamrock appears to have been a device 
only of later times. 

St. David is as quickly despatched. This champion enters 
Wales to crush the pagans there. He wears a leek in his helmet, 
and his followers adopt the same fashion, in order that friend may 
be distinguished from foe. The doughty saint, of course, comes 
conqueror out of the battle, but he is in a heated state, gets a chill 
and dies after all of a common cold. Bruce, returning safe from 
exploring the Nile, to break his neck by falling down his own 
stairs, hardly presents a more practical bathos than this. Why 
the leek became the badge of Welshmen need not be further ex- 
plained. 

It is singular that in recounting the manner of the death of the 
next champion, St. Denis, the romancer is less romantic than com- 
mon tradition. He tells us how the knight repaired to then pagan 
France ; how he was accused of being a Christian, by another 
knight of what we should fancy a Christian order, St. Michael, 
and how the pagan king orders St. Denis to be beheaded, in con- 
sequence. There are wonders in the heavens, at this execution, 
which convert the heathen sovereign to Christianity ; but no men- 
tion is made of St. Denis having walked to a monastery, after his 



THE CHAMPIONS OP CHRISTENDOM. 123 

head was off, and with his head under his arm. Of this prodigy 
Voltaire remarked, " Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute," but 
of that the romancer makes no mention. St. James suffers by 
being shut up in his chapel in Spain, and starved to death, by order 
of the Atheist king. Anthony dies quietly in a good old age, in 
Italy ; St. Andrew is beheaded by the cruel pagan Scots whom, 
in his old age, he had visited, in order to bring them to conversion : 
and St. George, who goes on, riding down wild monsters and res- 
cuing timid maidens, to the last — and his inclination, was always 
in the direction of the maidens — ultimately meets his death by the 
sting of a venomous dragon. 

And now it would seem that two or three hundred years ago, 
authors were very much like the actors in the Critic, who when they 
did get hold of a good thing, could never give the public enough 
of it. Accordingly, the biography of the Seven Champions was 
followed by that of their sons. I will spare my readers the tur- 
bulent details : they will probably be satisfied with learning that 
the three sons of St. George became kings, " according as the 
fairy queen had prophesied to them," and that Sir Turpin, son of 
David, Sir Pedro, son of James, Sir Orlando, son of Anthony, 
Sir Ewen, son of Andrew, Sir Phelim, son of Patrick, and Sir 
Owen, son of David, like their sires, combated with giants, mon- 
sters, and dragons ; tilted and tournamented in honor of the ladies, 
did battle in defence of Christianity, relieved the distressed, anni- 
hilated necromancers and table-turners, in short, accomplished all 
that could be expected from knights of such prowess and chivalry. 

When Richard Johnson. had reached this part of his history, 
he gave it to the world, awaiting the judgment of the critics, be- 
fore he published his second portion : that portion wherein he was 
to unfold what nobody yet could guess at, namely, wherefore the 
Seven Champions were called par excellence, the Champions of 
Christendom. I am afraid that meanwhile those terrible, god-like, 
and inexorable critics, had not dealt altogether gently with him. 
The Punch they offered him was not made exclusively of sweets. 
His St. George had been attacked, and very small reverence been 
expressed for his ladies. But see how calmly and courteously — 
all the more admirable that there must have been some affectation 
in the matter — he turns from the censuring judges to that benev- 



124 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

olent personage, the gentle reader. "Thy courtesy," he says, 
" must be my buckler against the carping malice of mocking jest- 
ers, that being worse able to do well, scoff commonly at that they 
can not mend ; censuring all things, doing nothing, but (monkey- 
like) make apish jests at anything they do in print, and nothing 
pleaseth them, except it savor of a scoffing and invective spirit. 
Well, what they say of me I do not care ; thy delight is my sole 
desire." Well said, bold Richard Johnson. He thought he had 
put down criticism as St. George had the dragon. 

I can not say, however, that good Richard Johnson treats his 
gentle reader fairly. This second part of his Champions is to a 
reader worse than what all the labors of Hercules were to the 
lusty son of Alcmena. An historical drama at Astley's is not half 
so bewildering, and is almost as credible, and Mr. Ducrow himself 
when he was rehearsing his celebrated " spectacle drama" of " St. 
George and the Dragon" at old Drury — and who that ever saw 
him on those occasions can possibly forget him ? — achieved greater 
feats, or was more utterly unlike any sane individual than St. 
George is, as put upon the literary stage by Master Johnson. 

One comfort in tracing the tortuosities of this chivalric romance 
is that the action is rapid ; but then there is so much of it, and it 
is so astounding ! We are first introduced to the three sons of 
St. George, who are famous hunters in England, and whose mother, 
the lady Sabra, "catches her death," by going out attired like 
Diana, to witness their achievements. The chivalric widower 
thereupon sets out for Jerusalem, his fellow-champions accompany, 
and George's three sons, Guy, Alexander, and David, upon insin- 
uation from their mother's spirit, start too in pursuit. The lads 
were knighted by the king of England before they commenced 
their journey, which they perform with the golden spur of chivalry 
attached to their heels. They meet with the usual adventures by 
the way: destroying giants, and rescuing virgins, who in these 
troublesome times seem to have been allowed to travel about too 
much by themselves. Meanwhile, their sire is enacting greater 
prodigies still, and is continually delivering his fellow-champions 
from difficulties, from which they are unable to extricate themselves. 
Indeed, in all circumstances, his figure is the most prominent ; and 
although the other half-dozen must have rendered some service on 



THE CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTENDOM. 125 

each occasion, St. George makes no more mention of the same 
than Marshal St. Arnaud, in his letters on the victory at the Alma, 
does of the presence and services of the English. 

It is said that Mrs. Radcliffe, whose horrors used to delight and 
distress our mothers and aunts, in their younger days, became her- 
self affected by the terrors which she only paints to explain away 
natural circumstances. What then must have been the end of 
Richard Johnson ? His scene of the enchantments of the Black 
Castle is quite enough to have killed the author with bewilderment. 
There is a flooring in the old palace of the Prince of Orange in 
Brussels, which is so inlaid with small pieces of wood, of a thou- 
sand varieties of patterns, as to be a triumph of its kind. I was 
not at all surprised, when standing on that floor, to hear that when 
the artist had completed his inconceivable labor, he gave one wild 
gaze over the parquet of the palace, and dropped dead of a fit of 
giddiness. I am sure that Richard Johnson must have met with 
some such calamity after revising this portion of his history. It 
is a portion in which it is impossible for the Champions or for the 
readers to go to sleep. The noise is terrific, the incidents fall like 
thunderbolts, the changes roll over each other in a succession made 
with electric rapidity, and when the end comes we are all the more 
rejoiced, because we have comprehended nothing ; but we are es- 
pecially glad to find that the knight of the Black Castle, who is 
the cause of all the mischief, is overcome, flies in a state of desti- 
tution to a neighboring wood, and being irretrievably " hard up," 
stabs himself with the first thing at hand, as ruthlessly as the lover 
of the " Ratcatcher's Daughter." 

Time, place, propriety, and a respect for contemporary history, 
are amusingly violated throughout the veracious details. Nothing 
can equal the confusion, nothing can be more absurd than the 
errors. But great men have committed errors as grave. Shake- 
speare opened a seaport in Bohemia, and Mr. Macaulay wrote 
of one Penn what was only to be attributed to another. And now, 
have the dramatists treated St. George better than the romancers ? 

The national saint was, doubtless, often introduced in the Mys- 
teries ; but the first occasion of which I have any knowledge of 
his having been introduced on the stage, was by an author named 
John Kirke. John was so satisfied with his attempt that he never 



126 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

wrote a second play. He allowed his fame to rest on the one in 
question, which is thus described on his title-page : " The Seven 
Champions of Christendome. Acted at the Cocke Pit, and at the 
Bed Bull in St. John's Streete, with a general liking, And never 
printed till this yeare 1638. Written by J. K. — London, printed 
by J. Okes, and are (sic) to be sold by James Becket, at his Shop 
in the Inner Temple Gate, 1638." 

John Kirke treats Ins subject melodramatically. In the first 
scene, Calib the Witch, in a speech prefacing her declarations of a 
love for foul weather and deeds, tells the audience by way of pro- 
logue, how she had stolen the young St. George from his now de- 
funct parent, with the intention of making a bath for her old bones 
out of his young warm blood. Love, however, had touched her, 
and she had brought up " the red-lipped boy," with some indefinite 
idea of making something of him when a man. 

With this disposition the old lady has some fears as to the pos- 
sible approaching term of her life ; but, as she is assured by " Tar- 
fax the Devill" that she can not die unless she love blindly, the 
witch, like a mere mortal, accounting that she loves wisely, reckons 
herself a daughter of immortality, and rejoices hugely. The col- 
loquy of this couple is interrupted by their son Suckabud, who, 
out of a head just broken by St. George, makes complaint with 
that comic lack of fun, which was wont to make roar the entire 
inside of the Red Bull. The young clown retires with his sire, 
and then enters the great St. George, a lusty lad, with a world of 
inquiries touching his parentage. Calib explains that his lady 
mother was anything but an honest woman, and that his sire was 
just the partner to match. "Base or noble, pray?" asks St. 
George. To which the witch replies : — 

" Base and noble too ; 
Both base by thee, but noble by descent ; 
And thou born base, yet mayst thou write true gent :" . 

and it may be said, parenthetically, that many a " true gent" is by 
birth equal to St. George himself. 

Overcome by her affection, the witch makes a present to St. 
George of the half-dozen champions of England whom she holds 
in chains within her dwelling. One of them is described as " the 



THE CHAMPIONS OP CHRISTENDOM. 127 

lively, brisk, cross-cap'ring Frenchman, Denis." "With these for 
slaves, Calib yields her wand of power, and the giver is no sooner 
out of sight when George invokes the shades of his parents, who 
not only appear and furnish him with a corrected edition of his 
biography, but inform him that he is legitimate Earl of Coventry, 
with all the appurtenances that a young earl can desire. 

Thereupon ensues a hubbub that must have shaken all the lamps 
in the cockpit. George turns the Witch's power against herself, 
and she descends to the infernal regions, where she is punningly 
declared to have gained the title of Duchess of Helvetia. The 
six champions are released, and the illustrious seven companions 
go forth in search of adventures, with Suckabus for a " Squire." 
The father of the latter gives him some counsel at parting, which 
is a parody on the advice of Polonius to Laertes. " Lie," says 
Torpax : — 

" Lie to great profit, borrow, pay no debts, 
Cheat and purloin, they are gaming dicers' bets." 

" If Cottington outdo me," says the son, " he be-whipt." And 
so, after the election of St. George as the seventh champion of 
Christendom, ends one of the longest acts that Bull or Cockpit 
was ever asked to witness and applaud. 

The next act is briefer but far more bustling. We are in that 
convenient empire of Trebizond, where everything happened which 
never took place, according to the romances. The whole city is 
in a state of consternation at the devastations of a detestable 
'dragon, and a lion, his friend and co-partner. The nobles bewail 
the fact in hexameters, or at least in lines meant to do duty for 
them ; and the common people bewail the fact epigrammatically, 
and describe the deaths of all who have attempted to slay the 
monsters, with a broadness of effect that doubtless was acknowl- 
edged by roars of laughter. Things grow worse daily, the fiends 
look down, and general gloom is settling thick upon the empire, 
when Andrew of Scotland and Anthony of Italy arrive, send in 
their cards, and announce their determination to slay both these 
monsters. 

Such visitors are received with more than ordinary welcome. 
The emperor is regardless of expense in his liberality, and his 



128 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

daughter Violetta whispers to her maid Carinthia that she is 
already in love with one of them, but will not say which ; a remark 
which is answered by the pert maid, that she is in love with both, 
and would willingly take either. All goes on joyously until in 
the course of conversation, and it is by no means remarkable for 
brilliancy, the two knights let fall that they are Christians. Now, 
you must know, that the established Church at Trebizond at this 
time, which is at any period, was heathen. The court appeared 
to principally affect Apollo and Diana, while the poorer people 
put up with Pan, and abused him for denouncing may-poles! 
Well, the Christians had never been emancipated ; nay, they had 
never been tolerated in Trebizond, and it was contrary to law that 
the country should be saved, even in its dire extremity, by Chris- 
tian help. The knights are doomed to die, unless they will turn 
heathens. This, of course, they decline with a dignified scorn ; 
whereupon, in consideration of their nobility, they are permitted 
to choose their own executioners. They make choice of the ladies, 
but Violetta and Carinthia protest that they can not think of such 
a thing. Their high-church sire is disgusted with their want of 
orthodoxy, and he finally yields to the knights their swords, that 
they may do justice on themselves as the law requires. But 
Andrew and Anthony are no sooner armed again than they clear 
their way to liberty, and the drop scene falls upon the rout of the 
whole empire of Trebizond. 

The third act is of gigantic length, and deals with giants. There 
is mourning in Tartary. David has killed the king's son in a tour- 
nament, and the king remarks, like a retired apothecary, that 
"Time's plaster must draw the sore before he can feel peace 
again." To punish David, he is compelled to undertake the de- 
struction of the enchanter Ormandine, who lived in a cavern fortress 
with " some selected friends." The prize of success is the reversion 
of the kingdom of Tartary to the Welsh knight. The latter goes 
upon his mission, but he is so long about it that our old friend Cho- 
rus enters, to explain what he affirms they have not time to act — 
namely, the great deeds of St. George, who, as we learn, had slain 
the never-to-be-forgotten dragon, rescued Sabrina, been cheated of 
his reward, and held in prison seven years upon bread and water. 
His squire, Suckabus, alludes to giants whom he and his master 



THE CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTENDOM. 129 

had previously slain, and whose graves were as large as Tothill 
Fields. He also notices " Ploydon's law," and other matters, that 
could hardly have been contemporaneous with the palmy days of 
the kingdom of Tartary. Meanwhile, David boldly assaults 
Ormandine, but the enchanter surrounds him with some delicious- 
looking nymphs, all thinly clad and excessively seductive ; and we 
are sorry to say that the Welsh champion, not being cavalierly 
mounted on proper principles, yields to seduction, and after various 
falls under various temptations, is carried to bed by the rollicking 
nymph Drunkenness. 

But never did good, though fallen, men want for a friend at a 
pinch. St. George is in the neighborhood; and seedy as he is 
after seven years in the dark, with nothing more substantial by 
way of food than bread, and nothing more exhilarating for bever- 
age than aqua pura, the champion of England does David's work, 
and with more generosity than justice, makes him a present of the 
enchanter's head. David presents the same to the King of Tar- 
tary, that, according to promise pledged in case of such a present 
being made, he may be proclaimed heir-apparent to the Tartarian 
throne. With this bit of cheating, the long third act comes to an 
end. 

The fourth act is taken up with an only partially successful at- 
tack by James, David, and Patrick, on a cruel enchanter, Argalio, 
who at least is put to flight, and that, at all events, as the knights 
remark, is something to be thankful for. The fifth and grand act 
reveals to us the powerful magician, Brandron, in his castle. He 
holds in thrall the King of Macedon — a little circumstance not 
noted in history ; and he has in his possession the seven daughters 
of his majesty transformed into swans. The swans contrive to 
make captives of six of the knights as they were taking a "gentle 
walk" upon his ramparts. They are impounded as trespassers, 
and Brandron, who has some low comedy business with Suckubus, 
will not release them but upon condition that they fight honestly 
in his defence against St. George. The six duels take place, and 
of course the champion of England overcomes all his friendly an- 
tagonists ; whereupon Brandron, with his club, beats out his own 
brains, in presence of the audience. 

At this crisis, the King of Macedon appears, restored to power, 

9 



130 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

and inquires after his daughters. St. George and the rest, with 
a use of the double negatives that would have shocked Lindley 
Murray, declare 

" We never knew, nor saw no ladies here." 

The swans, however, soon take their pristine form, and the three 
daughters appear fresh from their plumes and their long bath upon 
the lake. Upon this follows the smart dialogue which we extract 
as a sample of how sharply the King of Macedon looked to his 
family interests, and how these champion knights were " taken in" 
before they well knew how the fact was. accomplished. 

Mac. Reverend knights, may we desire to know which of you are unmar- 
ried? 

Ant., Den., and Pat. We are. 

Geo,. Then here's these ladies, take 'era to your beds. 

Mac. George highly honors aged Macedon. 

The three Knights. But can the ladies' love accord with us ? 

The three Ladies. Most willingly ! 

The three Knights. We thus then seal our contract. 

Geo.. Which thus we ratifie. 

Sit with the brides, most noble Macedon ; 
And since kind fortune sent such happy chance, 
We'll grace your nuptials with a soldier's dance. 

And, fore George, as our fathers used to say, they make a night 
of it. The piece ends with a double military reel, and the audiences 
at the Bull and the Cockpit probably whistled the tune as they 
wended their way homeward to crab-apple ale and spiced ginger- 
bread. 

Next to the Champions of Christendom, the King's Knight 
Champion of England is perhaps the most important personage — 
in the point of view of chivalry, I think it is some French author 
who has said, that revolutions resemble the game of chess, where 
the pawns or pieces (les pions) may cause the ruin of the king, 
save him, or take his place, Now the champ pion, as this French 
remark reminds me, is nothing more than the field pion, pawn, or 
piece, put forward to fight in the king's quarrel. 

The family of the Champion of England bears, it may be ob- 
served, exactly the name which suits a calling so derived. The 
appellation "Dymoke" is derived from Ve Umhrosa Quercu ; I 



THE CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTENDOM. 131 

should rather say it is the translation of it ; and Harry De Um- 
brosa Quercu is only Harry of the Shady or Dim Oak, a very apt 
dwelling-place and name for one whose chief profession was that 
of field-pawn to the king. 

This derivation or adaptation of names from original Latin sur- 
names is common enough, and some amusing pages might be writ- 
ten on the matter, in addition to what has been so cleverly put 
together by Mr. Mark Anthony Lower, in his volume devoted 
especially to an elucidation of English surnames. 

The royal champions came in with the Conquest. The Norman 
dukes had theirs in the family of Marmion — ancestors of that 
Marmion of Sir Walter Scott's, who commits forgery, like a com- 
mon knave of more degenerate times. The Conqueror conferred 
sundry broad lands in England on his champions ; among others, 
the lands adjacent to, as well as the castle of Tarn worth. Near 
this place was the first nunnery established in this country. The 
occupants were the nuns of St. Edith, at Polesworth. Robert de 
Marmion used the ladies very " cavalierly," ejected them from their 
house, and deprived them of their property. But such victims 
had a wonderfully clever way of recovering their own. 

My readers may possibly remember how a certain Eastern pot- 
entate injured the church, disgusted the Christians generally, and 
irritated especially that Simeon Stylites who sat on the summit of 
a pillar, night and day, and never moved from his abiding-place. 
The offender had a vision, in which he not only saw the indignant 
Simeon, but was cudgelled almost into pulp by the simulacre of 
that saint. I very much doubt if Simeon himself was in his airy 
dwelling-place at that particular hour of the night. I was remind- 
ed of this by what happened to the duke's champion, Robert de 
Marmion. He was roused from a deep sleep by the vision of a 
stout lady, who announced herself as the wronged St. Edith, and 
who proceeded to show her opinion of De Marmion's conduct 
toward her nuns, by pommelling his ribs with her crosier, until 
she had covered his side with bruises, and himself with repent- 
ance. What strong-armed young monk played St. Edith that 
night, it is impossible to say ; but that he enacted the part success- 
fully, is seen from the fact that Robert brought back the ladies to 
Polesworth, and made ample restitution of all of which they had 



132 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

been deprived. The nuns, in return, engaged with alacrity to inter 
all defunct Marmions within the chapter-house of their abbey, for 
nothing. 

With the manor of Tani worth in Warwickshire, Marmion held 
that of Scrivelsby in Lincolnshire. The latter was held of the 
King by grand sergeantry, " to perform the office of champion at 
the King's coronation." At his death he was succeeded by a son 
of the same Christian name, who served the monks of Chester pre- 
cisely as his sire had treated the nuns at Polesworth. This second 
Robert fortified his ill-acquired prize — the priory; but happening 
to fall into one of the newly-made ditches, when inspecting the for- 
tifications, a soldier of the Earl of Chester killed him, without diffi- 
culty, as he lay with broken hip and thigh, at the bottom of the 
fosse. The next successor, a third Robert, was something of a 
judge, with a dash of the warrior, too, and he divided his estates 
between two sons, both Roberts, by different mothers. The eldest 
son and chief possessor, after a bustling and emphatically " bat- 
tling" life, was succeeded by his son Philip, who fell into some 
trouble in the reign of Henry III. for presuming to act as a judge 
or justice of the peace, without being duly commissioned. This 
Philip was, nevertheless, one of the most faithful servants to a 
king who found so many faithless ; and if honors were heaped 
upon him in consequence, he fairly merited them all. He was 
happy, too, in marriage, for he espoused a lady sole heiress to a 
large estate, and who brought him four daughters, co-heiresses to 
the paternal and maternal lands of the Marmions and the Kilpecs. 

This, however, is wandering. Let us once more return to or- 
derly illustration. In St. George I have shown how pure romance 
deals with a hero. In the next chapter I will endeavor to show 
in what spirit the lives and actions of real English heroes have 
been treated by native historians. In so doing, I will recount the 
story of Sir Guy of Warwick, after their fashion, with original il- 
lustrations and " modern instances." 



SIR GUY OF WARWICK. 133 



SIR GUY OF WARWICK, 

AND WHAT BEFELL HIM. 

" His desires 
Are higher than his state, and his deserts 
Not much short of the most he can desire.' 

Chapman's Byron's Conspiracy. 

The Christian name of Guy was once an exceedingly popular 
name in the county of York. I have never heard a reason as- 
signed for this, but I think it may have originated in admiration 
of the deeds and the man whose appellation and reputation have 
survived to our times. I do not allude to Guy Faux ; that young 
gentleman was the Father of Perverts, but by no means the first 
of the Guys. 

The " Master Guy" of whom I am treating here, or, rather, 
about to treat, was a youth whose family originally came from 
Northumberland. That family was, in one sense, more noble than 
the imperial family of Muscovy, for its members boasted not only 
of good principles, but of sound teeth. 

The teeth and principles of the Romanoffs are known to be in a 
distressing state of dilapidation. 

Well ; these Northumbrian Guys having lived extremely fast, 
and being compelled to compound with their creditors, by plunder- 
ing the latter, and paying them zero in the pound, migrated south- 
ward, and finally settled in Warwickshire. Now, the head of the 
house had a considerable share of common sense about him, and 
after much suffering in a state of shabby gentility, he not only sent 
his daughters out to earn their own livelihood, but, to the intense 
disgust of his spouse, hired himself as steward to that noble gentle- 
man the Earl of Warwick. " My blood is as good as ever it was," 
said he to the fine lady his wife. " It is the blood of an upper 



134 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

servant," cried she, " and my father's daughter is the spouse of a 
flunkey. 

The husband was not discouraged ; and he not only opened his 
office in his patron's castle but he took his only son with him, and 
made him his first clerk. This son's name was Guy ; and he was 
rather given to bird-catching, hare-snaring, and " gentism" gener- 
ally. He had been a precocious youth from some months previous 
to his birth, and had given his lady -mother such horrid annoyance, 
that she was always dreaming of battles, fiery-cars, strong-smelling 
dragons, and the wrathful Mars. " Well," she used to remark to 
her female friends, while the gentlemen were over their wine, " I 
expect that this boy" (she had made up her mind to that) " will 
make a noise in the world, draw bills upon his father, and be the 

terror of maid-servants. Why, do you know " and here she 

became confidential, and I do not feel authorized to repeat what 
she then communicated. 

But Master Guy, the " little stranger" alluded to, proved better 
than was expected. He might have been considerably worse, and 
yet would not have been so bad as maternal prophecy had de- 
picted him. At eight years . . . but I hear you say, " When 
did all this occur ?" Well, it was in a November's " Morning 
Post," that announcement was made of the birth ; and as to the 
year, Master Guy has given it himself in the old metrical 
romance, 

" Two hundred and twenty years and odd, 
After our Savior Christ his birth, 
When King Athelstan wore the crown, 
I lived here upon the earth." 

At eight years old, I was about to remark, young Guy was the 
most insufferable puppy of his district. He won all the prizes 
for athletic sports ; and by the time he was sixteen there was not 
a man in all England who dared accept his challenge to wrestle 
with both arms, against him using only one. 

It was at this time that he kept his father's books and a leash 
of hounds, with the latter of which he performed such extraordi- 
nary feats, that the Earl of Warwick invited him from the stew- 
ard's room to his own table ; where Guy's father changed his plate, 
and Master Guy twitched him by the beard as he did it. 



SIR GUY OP WARWICK. 135 

At the head of the earl's table sat his daughter " Phillis the 
Fair," a lady who, like her namesake in the song, was " sometimes 
forward, sometimes coy," and altogether so sweetly smiling and so 
beguiling, that when the earl asked Guy if he would not come and 
hunt (the dinner was at 10 a. m.), Guy answered, as the French- 
man did who could not bear the sport, with a Merci, fai He ! and 
affecting an iliac seizure, hinted at the necessity of staying at home. 

The youth forthwith was carried to bed. Phillis sent him a 
posset, the earl sent him his own physician ; and this learned gen- 
tleman, after much perplexity veiled beneath the most affable and 
confident humbug, wrote a prescription which, if it could do the 
patient no good would do him no harm. He was a most skilful 
man, and his patients almost invariably recovered under this treat- 
ment. He occasionally sacrificed one or two when a consultation 
was held, and he was called upon to prescribe secundum artem ; 
but he compensated for this professional slaying by, in other cases, 
leaving matters to Nature, who was the active partner in his firm, 
and of whose success he was not in the least degree jealous. So, 
when he had written the prescription, Master Guy fell a discour- 
sing of the passion of love, and that with a completeness and a 
variety of illustration as though he were the author of the chapter 
on that subject in Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy." The 
doctor heard him to the end, gently rubbing one side of his nose 
the while with the index-finger of his right hand ; and when his 
patient had concluded, the medical gentleman smiled, hummed 
" Phillis is my only joy," and left the room with his head nodding 
like a Chinese Mandarin's. 

By this time the four o'clock sun was making green and gold 
pillars of the trees in the neighboring wood, and Guy got up, 
looked at the falling leaves, and thought of the autumn of his hopes. 
He whistled " Down, derry, down," with a marked emphasis on 
the down ; but suddenly his hopes again sprang up, as he beheld 
Phillis among her flower-beds, engaged in the healthful occupation 
which a sublime poet has given to the heroine whom he names, 
and whose action he describes, when he tells us that 

" Miss Dinah was a-walking in her garding one day." 

Guy trussed his points, pulled up his hose, set his bonnet smartly 
on his head, clapped a bodkin on his thigh, and then walked 



136 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

into the garden with the air of the once young D'Egville in a 
ballet, looking after a nymph — which indeed was a pursuit he was 
much given to when he was old D'Egville, and could no longer 
bound throught his ballets, because he was stiff in the joints. 

Guy, of course, went down on one knee, and at once plunged 
into the most fiery style of declaration, but Phillis had not read 
the Mrs. Chapone of that day for notliing. She brought him 
back to prose and propriety, and then the two started afresh, and 
they did talk ! Guy felt a little " streaked" at first, but he soon 
recovered his self-possession, and it would have been edifying for 
the young mind to have heard how these two pretty things spoke 
to, and answered each other in moral maxims stolen from the top 
pages of their copy-books. They poured them out by the score, 
and the proverbial philosophy they enunciated was really the origin 
of the book so named by Martin Tupper. He took it all from 
Phillis and Guy, whose descendants, of the last name, were so 
famous for their school-books. This I expect Mr. Tupper will 
(not) mention in his next edition. 

After much profitable interchange of this sort of article, the 
lady gently hinted that Master Guy was not indifferent to her, but 
that he was of inferior birth, yet of qualities that made him equal 
with her ; adding, that hitherto he had done little but kill other 
people's game, whereas there were nobler deeds to be accom- 
plished. And then she bade him go in search of perilous adven- 
tures, winding up with the toast and sentiment, " Master Guy, 
eagles do not care to catch flies." 

Reader, if you have ever seen the prince of pantomimists, Mr. 
Payne, tear the hair of his theatrical wig in a fit of amorous de- 
spair, you may have some idea as to the intensity with which 
Master Guy illustrated his own desperation. He stamped the 
ground with such energy that all the hitherto quiet aspens fell 
a-shaking, and their descendants have ever since maintained the 
same fashion. Phillis fell a-crying at this demonstration, and 
softened considerably. After a lapse of five minutes, she had 
blushingly directed Master Guy to " speak to papa." 

Now, of all horrible interviews, this perhaps is the most horrible. 
Nelson used to say that there was only one thing on earth which 
he dreaded, and that was dining with a mayor and corporation. 



SIR GUY OF WARWICK. 137 

Doubtless it is dreadful, but what is it compared with looking a 
grave man in the face, who has no sentiment into him, and whose 
first remark is sure to be, " Well, sir, be good enough to tell me — 
what can you settle on my daughter ? What can you do to secure 
her happiness ?" 

" Well," said Guy, in reply to this stereotyped remark, " I can 
kill the Dun cow on the heath. She has killed many herself 
who've tried the trick on her ; and last night she devoured crops 
of clover, and twice as many fields of barley on your lordship's 
estate." 

" First kill the cow, and then ," said the earl with a smile ; 

and Shakespeare had the echo of this speech in his ear, when he 
began the fifth act of his Othello. Now Guy was not easily 
daunted. If I cared to make a pun, I might easily have said 
" cowed," but in a grave and edifying narrative this loose method 
of writing would be extremely improper. Guy, then, was not 
a coward — nay, nothing is hidden under the epithet. He tossed 
a little in bed that night as he thought the matter over, and 
the next morning made sheets of paper as crumpled as the cow's 
horns, as he rejected the plans of assault he had designed upon 
them, and sat uncertain as to what he should do in behoof of his 
own fortune. He at length determined to go and visit the terrible 
animal "incognito." It is the very word used by one of the 
biographers of Guy, an anonymous Northumbrian, who published 
the life on a broad sheet, with a picture of Master Guy which 
might have frightened the cow, and which is infinitely more ugly. 
Neither the black-letter poem, the old play, nor the pamphlets or 
ballads, use the term incognito, but all declare that Guy proceeded 
with much caution, and a steel cuiras over his jerkin. I mention 
these things, because without correctness my narrative would be 
worthless. I am not imaginative, and would not embroider a plain 
suit of fact upon any account. 

Guy's carefulness is to be proved. Here was a cow that had 
been more destructive than ever Red Riding Hood's Wolf was — 
that Count Wolf, who used to snap up young maidens, and lived 
as careless of respectability as was to be expected of a man once 
attached to a " marching regiment," and who turned monk. The 
cow was twelve feet high, from the hoof to the shoulder, and 



138 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

eighteen feet long, from the neck to the root of the tail. All the 
dragons ever heard of had never been guilty of such devastation to 
life and property as this terrible cow. Guy looked at her and did 
not like her. The cow detected him and rushed at her prey. Guy 
was active, attacked her in front and rear, as the allies did the forts 
of Bomarsund; very considerably confused her by burying his 
battle-axe in her skull ; hung on by her tail as she attempted to 
fly ; and finally gave her the coup de grace by passing his rapier 
rapidly and repeatedly through her especially vulnerable point 
behind the ear. In proof of the fact, the scene of the conflict still 
bears the name of Dunsmore Heath, and that is a wider basis of 
proof than many " facts" stand upon, to which we are required by 
plodding teachers to give assent. 

Besides, there is a rib of this very cow exhibited at Bristol. 
To be sure it is not a rib now of a cow, but out of reverence to 
the antiquity of the assertion which allegedly makes it so, I think 
we are bound to believe what is thus advanced. Not that I do 
myself, but that is of no consequence. I have a strong idea that 
the cow was not a cow, but a countess (not a Countess Cowper), 
who made war in her own right, lived a disreputable life, was as 
destructive to wealthy young lords as a Lorette, and won whole 
estates by cheating at ecarte. Guy took a hand,* and beat her. 

Poor Master Guy, he was as hardly used as ever Jacob was, 
and much he meditated thereupon in the fields at eventide. The 
stern earl would by no means give his consent to the marriage of 
his daughter with the young champion, until the latter had per- 
formed some doughtier deeds than this. The boy (he was still in 
his teens) took heart of grace, divided a crooked sixpence with 
Phillis, and straightway sailed for Normandy, where he arrived, 
after meeting as many thieves by the way as if he had walked 
about for a month in the streets of Dover. But Master Guy killed 
all he met ; there is a foolish judicial, not to say social, prejudice 
against our doing the same with the bandits of Dover. I can not 
conjecture why ; perhaps they have a privilege under some of the 
city companies, whereby they are constituted the legal skinners 
of all sojourners among them, carrying filthy lucre. 

Guy met in Normandy with the last person he could have ex- 
pected to fall in with — no other than the Emperor of Almayne, 



SIR GUY OF WARWICK. 139 

a marvellously ubiquitous person to be met with in legends, and 
frequently encountered in the seaports of inland towns. The 
historians are here a little at issue. One says that Master Guy 
having found a certain Dorinda tied to the stake, and awaiting a 
champion who would stake his own life for her rescue, inquired 
the " antecedents" of the position. Dorinda, it appears, had been 
as rudely used as young lady possibly could be, " by the Duke 
of Blois, his son," and the duke was so enraged at Dorinda's charge 
against his favorite Otto, that he condemned her to be burned 
alive, unless a champion appeared in time to rescue her by defeat- 
ing the aforesaid Otto in single combat. Guy, of course, transacted 
the little business successfully ; spoiled Otto's beauty by slashing 
his nose ; and so enchanted Dorinda, that she never accused her 
champion of doing aught displeasing to her. 

Anxious as I am touching the veracity of tins narrative, I have 
recorded what biographers state, though not in their own words. 
But I must add, that in some of the histories this episode about 
Dorinda is altogether omitted, and we only hear of Master Guy 
appearing in panoply at a tournament given by the Emperor of 
Allemagne, in Normandy — which is much the same, gentle reader, 
as if I were, at your cost, to give a concert and ball, with a supper 
from Farrance's, and all, not in my house, but in yours. Never- 
theless, in Normandy the tournament was held, and the paternal 
Emperor of Allemagne, having then a daughter, Blanche, of whom 
he wished to get rid, he set her up as the prize of the conquering 
knight in the tournament. 

I think I hear you remark something as to the heathenness of 
the custom. But it is a custom sacred to these times ; and our 
neighbors (for of course neither you nor I could condescend to 
such manners) get up evening tournaments of whist, quadrilles, 
and a variety of singing — of every variety but the good and in- 
telligible, and at these modern tournaments given for the express 
purpose which that respectable old gentleman, the Emperor of 
Allemagne, had in view when he opened his lists ; the " girls" are 
the prizes of the carpet-knights. So gentlemen, faites voire jeu, 
as the philosopher who presided at Frescati's used to say — faites 
voire jeu, Messieurs ; and go in and win. Perhaps if you read 
Cowper, you may be the better armed against loss in such a conflict. 



140 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

I need not say that Master Guy's good sword, which gleamed 
like lightning in the arena, and rained blows faster than ever Mr. 
Blanchard rained them, in terrific Coburg combats, upon the vul- 
nerable crest of Mr. Bradley — won for him the peerless prize — < 
to say nothing of a dog and a falcon thrown in. Master Guy 
rather ungallantly declined having the lady, though her father 
would have given him carte blanche ; he looked at her, muttered 
her name, and then murmured, " Blanche, as thou art, yet art 
thou black-a-moor, compared with my Phillis ;" — and with this 
unchivalric avowal, for it was a part of chivalry to say a thing 
and think another, he returned to England, carrying with him the 
" Spaniel King's Charls," as French authors write it, and the 
falcon, with a ring and a perch, like a huge parroquet. 

Master Guy entered Warwick in a "brougham," as we now 
might say, and sorely was he put to it with the uneasy bird. At 
every lurch of the vehicle, out flapped the wings, elongated was 
the neck, and Master Guy had to play at " dodge" with the falcon, 
who was intent upon darting his terrific beak into the cavalier's 
nose. At length, however, the castle was safely reached; the 
presents were deposited at the feet of Phillis the Fair, and Guy 
hoped, like the Peri, and also like that gentle spirit to be disap- 
pointed, that the gates of paradise were about to open. But not 
so, Phillis warmly praised his little regard for that pert minx, 
Blanche, or Blanc d'Espagne, as she wickedly added ; and she 
patted the spaniel, and offered sugar to the falcon ; and, after the 
dinner to which Guy was invited, she intimated in whispers, that 
they were both "too young as yet" (not that she believed so), and 
that more deeds must be done by Guy, ere the lawyers would be 
summoned by her papa to achieve some of their own. 

The youthful Guy went forth " reluctant but resolved," and he 
ivoidd have sung as he went along, 

"Elle a quinze ans, moi j'en ai seize," 

of Sedaine and Gretry, only neither poet nor composer, nor the 
opera of Richard Coeur de Lion, had yet appeared to gladden 
heart and ear. But the sentiment was there, and perhaps Sedaine 
knew of it when he penned the words. However this may be, 
Master Guy, though soft of heart, was not so of arm, for on this 



SIR GUY OF WARWICK. 141 

present cause of errantry he enacted such deeds that their very 
enumeration makes one breathless. His single sword cleared 
whole forests of hordes of brigands, through whose sides his 
trenchant blade passed as easily as the sabre, when held by Cor- 
poral Sutton, through a dead sheep. Our hero was by no means 
particular as to what he did, provided he was doing something ; 
nor what cause he fought for, provided there were a cause and a 
fight. Thus we find him aiding the Duke of Louvain against his 
old friend the Emperor of Allemagne. He led the Duke's forces, 
slew thousands upon thousands of the enemy, and, as though he 
had the luck of a modern Muscovite army, did not lose more than 
" one man," with slight damage to the helmet of a second. 

Master Guy, not yet twenty, surpassed the man whom Mr. 
Thiers calls " ce pur Anglais" Mr. Pitt, for he became a prime 
minister ere he had attained his majority. In that capacity he 
negotiated a peace for the Duke with the Emperor. The two 
potentates were so satisfied with the negotiator, that out of com- 
pliment they offered him the command of their united fleet against 
the Pagan Soldan of Byzantium. They did not at all expect that 
he would accept it ; but then they were not aware that Master Guy 
had much of the spirit which Sidney Smith, in after-years, dis- 
cerned in Lord John Russell — and the enterprising Guy accepted 
the command of the entire fleet, with quite an entire confidence. 

He did therewith, if chroniclers are to be credited, more than 
we might reasonably expect from Lord John Russell, were that 
statesman to be in command of a Channel squadron. Having 
swept the sea, he rather prematurely, if dates are to be respected, 
nearly annihilated Mohammedanism — and he was as invincible and 
victorious against every kind of Pagan. It was in the East that 
he overthrew in single combat, the giants Colbron and his brother 
Mongadora. He was resting after this contest, and leaning like 
the well-breathed Hotspur, upon his sword, at the entrance to his 
tent, when the Turkish governor Esdalante, approaching him, po- 
litely begged that he might take his head, as he had promised the 
same to an Osmanlee lady, who was in a condition of health which 
might be imperilled by refusal. Master Guy as politely bade him 
take it if he could, and therewith, they went at it " like French 
falconers," and Guy took off the head of his opponent instead of 



142 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

losing his own. This little matter being settled, Guy challenged 
the infidel Soldan himself, putting Christianity against Islamism, 
on the issue, and thus professing to decide questions of faith as 
Galerius did when he left Olympus and Calvary to depend upon 
a vote of the Eoman senate. Master Guy, being thrice armed by 
the justness of his quarrel, subdued the infidel Soldan, but the lat- 
ter, to show, as we are told, his insuperable hatred for Christian- 
ity, took handfuls of his own blood, and cast it in the face of his 
conqueror — and no doubt here, the victor had in his mind the true 
story of Julian insulting " the Galilean." We thus see how his- 
tory is made to contribute to legend. 

And now the appetite of the errant lover grew by what it fed 
upon. He mixed himself up in every quarrel, and could not see 
a lion and a dragon quietly settling their disputes in a wood, by 
dint of claws, without striking in for the lion, slaying his foe, and 
receiving with complacency the acknowledgments of the nobler beast. 

He achieved something more useful when he met Lord Terry 
in a wood, looking for his wife who had been carried off by a 
score of ravishers. "While the noble lord sat down on a mossy 
bank, like a gentleman in a melodrama, Guy rescued his wife in 
his presence, and slew all the ravishers, " in funeral order," the 
youngest first. He subsequently stood godfather to his friend 
Terry's child, and as I am fond of historical parallels, I may notice 
that Sir Walter Scott performed the same office for a Teriy, who 
if he was not a lord, often represented them, to say nothing of 
monarchs and other characters. 

Master Guy's return to England was a little retarded by an- 
other characteristic adventure. As he was passing through Lou- 
vain, he found Duke Otto besieging his father in his own castle — 
" governor" of the castle and the Duke. Now nothing shocked 
Master Guy so much as filial ingratitude, and despite all that Otto 
could urge about niggardly allowance, losses at play, debts of 
honor, and the parsimony of the " governor," our champion made 
common cause with the " indignant parent," and not only mortally 
wounded Otto, but, before the latter died, Guy brought him to a 
" sense of his situation," and Otto died in a happy frame of mind, 
leaving all his debts to his father. The legacy was by way of a 
" souvenir," and certainly the governor never forgot it. As for 



SIR GUY OF WARWICK. 143 

Guy, he killed the famous boar of Louvain, before he departed for 
England, and as he drew his sword from the animal's flank, he 
remarked, there lies a greater boar, and not a less beast than Otto 
himself. However, he took the head and hams with him, for 
Phillis was fond of both ; and as she was wont to say, if there 
was anything that could seduce her, it was brawn ! 

When Master Guy stepped ashore at Harwich, where that am- 
phibious town .now lies soaking, deputations from all quarters were 
awaiting him, to ask his succor against some terrible dragon in the 
north that was laying waste all the land, and laying hold of all the 
waists which the men there wished to enclose. King Athelstan 
was then at York hoping to terrify the indomitable beast by power 
of an army, which in combat with the noxious creature made as 
long a tail, in retreat, as the dragon itself. 

Now whatever this nuisance was which so terribly plagued the 
good folks in the North, whether a dragon with a tongue thirty 
feet long, or anything else equally hard to imagine, it is matter 
of fact that our Master Guy assuredly got the better of it. On 
his return he met an ovation in York ; Athelstan entertained him 
at a banquet, covered him with honor, endowed him with a good 
round sum, and thus all the newborn male children in the county 
became Guys. At least two thirds of them received the popular 
name, and for many centuries it remained in favor, until disgrace 
was brought upon it by the York proctor's son, whose e&igy still 
glides through our streets on each recurring 5th of November. 

I will not pause on this matter. I will only add that the Earl 
of Warwick, finding Guy a man whom the King delighted to honor, 
accepted him for a son-in-law ; and then, ever wise, and civil, and 
proper, he discreetly died. The King made Guy Earl of War- 
wick, in his place, and our hero being now a married man, he of 
course ceased to be Master Guy. 

And here I might end my legend, but that it has a moral in it 
Guy did a foolish but a common thing, he launched out into ex- 
travagant expenses, and, suddenly, he found himself sick, sad, and 
insolvent. Whether, therewith, his wife was soured, creditors 
troublesome, and bailiffs presuming, it is hard to say. One thing, 
however, is certain, that to save himself from all three, Earl Guy 
did what nobles often do now, in the same predicament, " went 



144 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

abroad." Guy, however, travelled in primitive style. He went 
on foot, and made his inn o'nights in church-yards, where he collo- 
quized with the skulls after the fashion of Hamlet with the skull 
of " poor Yorick." He had given out that he was going to Jeru- 
salem, but hearing that the Danes were besieging Athelstan at 
Winchester, he went thither, and, in modest disguise, routed them 
with his own unaided hand. Among his opponents, he met with 
the giant Colbron whom he had previously slain in Orient lands, 
and the two fought their battles o'er again, and with such exactly 
similar results as to remind one of the peculiar philosophy of Mr. 
Boatswain Cheeks. 

This appearance of Colbron in two places is a fine illustration 
of the " myth," and I mention it expressly for the benefit of the 
next edition of the Right Reverend Doctor Whateley's " Historical 
Fallacies." But to resume. 

Guy, imparting a confidential statement of his identity and in- 
tentions to the King, left him, to take up his abode in a cave, in a 
cliff, near his residence ; and at the gates of his own castle he re- 
ceived, in the guise of a mendicant, alms of money and bread, from 
the hands of his wife. I strongly suspect that the foundation of 
this section of our legend rests upon the probable fact that Phillis 
was of that quality which is said to belong to gray mares ; and that 
she led Guy a life which made him a miserable Guy indeed ; and 
that the poor henpecked man took to bad company abroad, and 
met with small allowance of everything but reproach at home 
And so he " died." 

A dramatic author of Charles I.'s reign, has, however, resusci- 
tated him in " A Tragical History of Guy, Earl of Warwick," en- 
acted several times in presence of that monarch, and professedly 
written by a certain " B. J.," whom I do not at all suspect of being 
Ben Jonson. The low comedy portion of this tragic drama is of 
the filthiest sort, dealing in phrases and figures which I can hardly 
conceive would now be tolerated in the lowest den of St. Giles's, 
certainly not out of it. If Charles heard this given more than 
once, as the titlepage intimates, " more shame for him." If his 
Queen was present, she haply may not have understood the verba 
ad summam caveam spectantia, and if a daughter could have been 
at the royal entertainment, why then the very idea revolts one, 



SIR GUY OP WARWICK. 145 

and pity is almost lost in indignation. That the author himself 
thought well of the piece, which he printed in 1661, is proved by 
the defiant epigraph which says : — 

" Carpere vel noli nostra vel ede tua." 

I must not devote much space to a retrospective review of this 
piece, particularly as the action begins after Guy has ceased to be 
" Master," and when, on his announcement of going to Jerusalem 
(perhaps to the Jews to do a little business in bills), Phillis makes 
some matronly remarks in a prospective sense, and a liberty of 
illustration which would horrify a monthly nurse. 

However, Guy goes forth and meets with a giant so huge, that 
his squire Sparrow says it required four-and-twenty men to throw 
mustard in his mouth when he dined. From such giants, Heaven 
protects the errant Guy, and with a troop of fairies, wafts him to 
Jerusalem. Here he finds Shamurath of Babylon assaulting the 
city, but Guy heaps miracle on miracle of valor, and produces such 
astounding results that Shamurath, who is a spectator of the deeds 
and the doer, inquires, with a suspicion of Connaught in the accent 
of the inquiry, " What divil or man is this ?" 

The infidel is more astonished than ever when Guy, after de- 
feating him, takes him into controversy, and laying hold of him as 
Dr. Cumming does of Romanism, so buffets his belief that the 
soldier, fairly out of breath and argument, gives in, and declares 
himself a Christian, on conviction. 

During one-and-twenty years, Guy has a restless life through 
the five acts of this edifying tragedy, and when he is seen again in 
England, overcoming the Danes, he intimates to Athelstan that he 
has six years more to pass in disguise, ere a vow, of which we 
have before heard nothing, will be fulfilled. Athelstan receives 
all that is said, in confidence ; and promises affably, " upon my 
word," not to betray the secret. Guy is glad to hear that Phillis 
is " pretty well ;" and then he takes up his residence as I have be- 
fore told, according to the legend. He and an Angel occasionally 
have a little abstruse disquisition ; but the most telling scene is 
doubtless where the bread is distributed to the beggars, by Phillis. 
Guy is here disguised as a palmer, and Phillis inquires if he knew 
the great Earl, to which Guy answers, with a wink of the eye, that 

10 



146 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

he and the Earl had often drank at the same crystal spring. But 
Phillis is too dull, or too melancholy to trace her way through so 
sorry a joke. 

And now, just as the hour of completion of the vowed time of 
his disguise, Guy takes to dying, and in that state he is found by 
Rainhorn, the son who knows him not. He sends a token by the 
young fellow to Phillis, who begins to suspect that the palmer who 
used to be so particular in asking for " brown bread" at her gate, 
must be the " Master Guy" of the days of sunny youth, short kir- 
tles, and long love-making. Mother and son haste to the spot, but 
the vital spark has fled. Phillis exclaims, with much composed 
thought, not unnatural in a woman whose husband has been seven- 
and-twenty years away from home, and whose memory is good : 
" If it be he, he has a mould-wart underneath his ear ;" to which 
the son as composedly remarks, " View him, good mother, satisfy 
your mind." Thereupon the proper identification of the " party" 
is established ; and the widow is preparing to administer, without 
will annexed, when Rainhorn bids her banish sorrow, as the King 
is coming. The son evidently thinks the honor of a living king 
should drown sorrow for a deceased parent ; just as a Roman fam- 
ily that can boast of a Pope in it, does not put on mourning even 
when that Pope dies ; the having had him, being considered a joy 
that no grief should diminish. 

Athelstan is evidently a King of Cockayne, for he affably ex- 
presses surprise at the old traveller's death, seeing, says his Majes- 
ty, that " I had appointed for to meet Sir Guy ;" to which the son, 
who has now succeeded to the estate, replies, in the spirit of an 
heir who has been waiting long for an inheritance: — that the 
death has happened, and can not now be helped. 

But the most remarkable matter in this tragedy is that uttered 
by Time, who plays prologue, epilogue, and interlude between the 
acts. Whatever Charles may have thought of the piece, he was 
doubtless well-pleased with Time, who addresses the audience in 
verse, giving a political turn to the lesson on the stage. I dare 
say the following lines were loudly applauded, if not by the king, 
by the gallants, courtiers, and cavaliers generally : — 

"In Holy Land abroad Guy's spirits roam, 
And not in deans and chapters' lands at home. 



SIE GUY OF WARWICK. 147 

His sacred fury menaceth that nation, 
Which held Judea under sequestration. 
He doth not strike at surplices and tippets, 
To bring an olio in of sects and sippets ; 
But deals his warlike and death-doing blows 
Against his Saviour's and his sor'reign's foes." 

How the Royalist throats must have roared applause, and war- 
rantable too, at these genial lines ; and how must the churchmen 
in the pit have stamped with delight when Time subsequently as- 
sured them that Guy took all his Babylonian prisoners to Jeru- 
salem, and had them probably christened by episcopally-ordained 
ministers ! If the house did not ring with the cheers of the Church- 
and-King audience there, why they were unworthy of the instruc- 
tion filtered through legend and tragedy. 

Such is the story of " Master Guy ;" a story whose incidents 
have doubtless meaning in them, but which were never turned to 
more practical purpose than when they were employed to support 
a tottering altar and a fallen throne. Reader, let us drink to the 
immortal memory of Master Gtjt ; and having seen what sort 
of man he was whom the king delighted to honor, let us see what 
honors were instituted by kings for other deserving men. 



148 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 



GARTERIANA. 

" Honor ! Your own worth before 
Hath been sufficient preparation." — The Maid's Revenge. 

A brief sketch of the history of the foundation of the Order of 
the Garter will be found in another page. Confining myself here 
to anecdotical detail, I will commence by observing, that in former 
times, no Knight could be absent from two consecutive feasts of 
the order, without being fined in a jewel, which he was to offer at 
St. George's altar. The fine was to be doubled every year, until 
he had mad^ atonement. Further, every knight was bound to wear 
the Garter in public, wherever he might be, on pain of a mulct of 
half a mark. Equally obligatory was it on the knight, in whatever 
part of the world he was residing, or however he was engaged, to 
wear the sanguine mantle of the order from the eve of St. George 
till vesper-time on the morrow of the festival. Some of the chev- 
aliers who were in distant lands must have caused as much sur- 
prise by their costume, as a Blue-coat boy does, wandering in his 
strangely-colored garb, in the streets of Paris. I need not allude 
to the absurd consequence which would attend the enforcing of 
this arrangement in our own days. Hunting is generally over be- 
fore the eve of St. George's day, and therefore a robed Knight of 
the Garter could never be seen taking a double fence, ditch and 
rail, at the tail of the " Melton Mowbray." But even the sight of 
half a dozen of them riding down Parliament street at the period 
in question, would hardly be a stranger spectacle. A slight money 
offering of a penny exempted any rather loose-principled knight 
from attending divine service at St. George's Chapel when he was 
in or near "Windsor. When a knight died, all his surviving com- 
rades were put to the expense of causing a certain number of 
masses to be said for his soul. The sovereign-lord of the order 



GARTERIANA. 149 

had one thousand masses chanted in furtherance of his rescue from 
purgatory. There was a graduated scale through the various 
ranks till the knight-bachelor was come to. For him, only one 
hundred masses were put up. This proves either that the knight's 
soul was not so difficult of deliverance from what Prince Gorscha- 
koff would call the " feu d'enfer," or that the King's was so heavily 
pressed to the lowest depths of purgatory by its crimes, that it re- 
quired a decupled effort before it could be rescued. 

" Companionship," it may be observed, profited a knight in some 
degree if, being knave as well as knight, he fell under the usual 
sentence of being " drawn, hanged, and beheaded." In such case, 
a Knight of the Garter only suffered decapitation, as Sir Simon 
Burley in 1388. The amount of favor shown to the offending 
knight did not admit of his being conscious of much gratitude to 
him at whose hands it was received. It may be mentioned, that 
it did not always follow that a nobleman elected to be knight wil- 
lingly accepted the proffered Garter. The first who refused it, 
after due election, in 1424, was the Duke of Burgundy. He 
declined it with as much scorn as Uhland did the star of merit 
offered to the poet by the present King of Bavaria. 

In treating of stage knights, I shall be found to have placed at 
their head Sir John Falstaff. The original of that character ac- 
cording to some namely, Sir John Fastolf, claims some notice here, 
as a Knight of the Garter who was no more the coward which he 
was said to be, than Falstaff is the bloated buffoon which some 
commentators take him for. Sir John Fastolf was elected Knight 
of the Garter in 1426. Monstrelet says he was removed from 
the order for running away, without striking a blow, at the battle 
of Patay. Shakespeare's popular Sir John has nothing in com- 
mon with this other Sir John, but we have Falstolf himself in 
Henry VI. act iv. sc. 1, with Talbot, alluding to his vow, that 

" When I did meet thee next, 
To tear the Garter from thy craven's leg, 
The which I have done, because unworthily 
Thou wast installed in that high degree." 

This sort of suspension or personal deprivation was never allowed 
by the rules of the order, which enjoined the forms for degrading 
a knight who was proved to have acted cowardly. The battle of 



150 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

Patay was fought in 1429 ; and as there is abundant testimony 
of Sir John having been in possession of the Garter and all its 
honors long after that period ; and, further, that his tomb in Pul- 
ham Mary, Norfolk, represented him in gilt armor, with his crest 
and two escutcheons, with the cross of St. George within the order, 
we may fairly conclude that if the charge was ever made, of which 
there is no trace, it assuredly never was proven. 

If there were some individuals who refused to accept the honor 
at all, there were others who were afraid to do so without curious 
inquiry. Thus, in the reign of Henry VI. we hear of the em- 
bassador from Frederick III. Emperor of Germany (one Sir Her- 
took von Clux), stating that his master wishes to know "what it 
would stand him in, if he were to be admitted into the honorable 
order ! " Cautious Austria ! 

There are examples both of courtesy and sarcasm among the 
Knights of the Garter. I may cite, for instance, the case of the 
Duke of York, in the reign of Henry VI. a. d. 1453. The King 
was too ill to preside at the Chapter ; the Duke of Buckingham 
was his representative ; and the Duke of York, so little scrupu- 
lous in most matters, excused himself from attending on tins oc- 
casion, because, as he said, " the sovereign having for some time 
been angry with him, he durst not attend, lest he should incur his 
further displeasure, and thereby aggravate the illness under which 
the King was suffering." When the same Duke came into power, 
he gave the Garter to the most useful men of the York party, 
beheading a few Lancastrian knights in order to make way for 
them. At the Chapter held for the purpose of electing the York 
aspirants, honest John de Foix, Earl of Kendal, declined to vote 
at all. He alleged that he was unable to discern whether the can- 
didates were " without reproach" or not, and he left the decision 
to clearsighted people. The Earl was a Lancastrian, and he thus 
evaded the disagreeable act of voting for personal and political 
enemies. 

But whatever the intensity of dislike one knight may have had 
against another, there were occasions on which they went, hand 
in hand, during the celebration of mass, to kiss that esteemable 
relic, the heart of St. George. This relic had been brought to 
England by the Emperor Sigismund. Anstis remarks, after al> 



GARTERIANA. 151 

luding to the obstinacy of those who will not believe all that St. 
Ambrose says touching the facts of St. George, his slaying of the 
dragon, and his rescue of a royal virgin, that " whosoever is so 
refractory as obstinately to condemn every part of this story, is not 
to be bore with." He then adds : "this true martyr and excellent 
and valued soldier of Christ, after many unspeakable torments in- 
flicted on him by an impious tyrant, when he had bent his head, 
and was just ready to give up the ghost, earnestly entreated Al- 
mighty God, that whoever, in remembrance of him, and his 
name, should devoutly ask anything, might be heard, a voice 
instantly came from Heaven, signifying that that was granted 
which he had requested. . . . While living, by prayer he 
obtained that whoever should fly to him for his intercession, should 
not pray nor cry out in vain. He ordered the trunk of his body, 
which had origin from among infidels, to be sent to them, that 
they whom he had not been able to serve, when living, might 
receive benefit from him, when dead ; that those infidels who by 
any misfortune had lost their senses, by coming to him or his 
chapel, might be restored to soundness of mind and judgment. 
His head and other members were to be carried, some one way 
and some another. But his heart, the emblem of lively love, was 
bequeathed wholly to Christians, for whom he had the most fervent 
affection. Not to all them in general, though Christians, but to Eng- 
lishmen alone ; and not to every part of England, but only to his 
own Windsor, which on this account must have been more pleasing 
to the sovereigns and all other the knights of this most illustrious 
order. Thus his heart, together with a large portion of his skull, 
is there kept with due honor and veneration. Sigismund, Em- 
peror of Alemain, always august, being chosen in this honorable 
order, presented this heart to the invincible Henry V., who gave 
orders to have it preserved in that convenient place, where he had 
already instituted for himself solemn exequies for ever, that the 
regard he had for all others might be past dispute." This is very 
far, indeed, from being logical, but the fact remains that during 
the reign of Henry VI., the heart seems to have been regarded 
with more than usual reverence by the knights of the two factions 
which were rending England. Each hoped to win St. George 
for a confederate. 



152 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

The chapters were not invariably held at Windsor, nor in such 
solemn localities as a chapel. In 1445, Henry VI., held a chapter 
at the Lion Inn in Brentford. In this hostelrie the King created 
Sir Thomas Hastings and Sir Alonzo d'Almade, Knights of the 
Garter. To the latter, who was also made Earl of Avranches, 
in the best room of a Brentford inn, the monarch also presented 
a gold cup. The whole party seems to have made a night of it in 
the pleasant locality, and the new chevaliers were installed the 
next morning — after which, probably, mulled sack went round in 
the golden cup. 

Shakespeare makes Richard III. swear by his George, his 
Garter, and his Crown ; but the George and Collar were novelties 
introduced by Henry VII. The latter King held one of the 
most splendid chapters which ever assembled, at York, prefacing 
the work there by riding with all the knights, in their robes, to 
the morning mass of requiem, and following it up by similarly 
riding to even-sung. This was more decent than Henry VI.'s 
tavern chapter of the (Red) Lion, in Brentford. Henry VII. 
was fond of the solemn splendor of installations, at which he 
changed his costume like a versatile actor, was surrounded by 
ladies as well as knights, and had Skelton, the poet, near to take 
notes for songs and sonnets, descriptive of the occasion. A sover- 
eign of the order, like Henry VII., so zealous to maintain its 
splendor and efficiency, merited the gift which was conferred upon 
him by the Cardinal of Rouen — of the bones of one of the legs 
of St. George. The saint had many legs, but it is not said where 
these bones were procured, and they who beheld them, at the 
chapter held in St. Paul's Cathedral in 1505, probably little 
troubled themselves as to whence the precious relics were derived. 
Henry, in return, left an image of St. George, of one hundred 
and forty ounces, adorned with masses of precious stones, to the 
College of Windsor, " there to remain while the world shall endure, 
to be set upon the high altar at all solemn feasts." Leg bones 
and costly image would now be sought for in vain. The world 
has outlived them, and suffers nothing by their loss. 

It was the successor of Richmond, namely Henry VHI. who 
granted to these knights what may be termed a sumptuary privi* 
lege, that of being permitted to wear woollen cloth made out of 



GARTERIANA. 153 

the realm. None but a knight, save the peers, dared don a coat 
or mantle made of foreign cloth. In love of splendor, Henry was 
equal to his predecessor, and perhaps never was a more brilliant 
spectacle seen than on the 27th of May, 1519, when the King and 
a glittering cortege rode from Richmond to "Windsor, and changed 
steeds and drank a cup at the " Catherine's "Wheel," in Colnbrook, 
by the way. The Queen and a galaxy of ladies met them in Eton, 
and the usual solemnities were followed by a gorgeous banquet, 
at which there were such meat and music as had scarcely ever 
been so highly enjoyed at a festival before. The middle of the 
hall was crowded with spectators, but at the close of the repast, 
these were turned out, when " the King was served of his void, 
the knights also, standing all along" — which must have been a 
remarkably edifying exhibition. 

Henry re-modelled the order, and framed the statutes by which 
it is now chiefly governed. Among them was the one directing 
that no person of mean birth should be elected, and this the King 
himself very speedily broke, by electing Thomas Cromwell. The 
latter returned thanks for the honor in the very humblest strain, 
and while he seemed conscious that he was entirely unworthy of 
the distinction, he appeared desirous to assure the sneering knights' 
companions who had been compelled to give him their suffrages, 
that ignoble as he was, he would imitate nobility as closely as pos- 
sible. But there were men, from the period of the institution of 
the order downward to Henry's time, who, if of higher birth than 
Cromwell, were not of higher worth. Very many had forfeited 
their dignity as knights by treasonable practices; and Henry 
decreed that wherever these names occurred in the records, the 
words " Voe Proditor !" — Out upon the traitor — should be written 
against them in the margin. The text had thus a truly Tudor 
comment. 

Under the succeeding sovereign, Edward VI., a great portion 
of the splendor of the religious ceremonies at the installation was 
abolished. It was in this reign that Northumberland procured 
the ejection of Lord Paget from the order, on the ground that the 
meanness of his birth had always disqualified him, or as Edward 
VI. says in his journal, " for divers his offences, and chiefly because 
he was no gentleman of blood, neither of father-side nor mother- 



154 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

side." Lord Paget, however, was restored under Mary, and the 
record of his degradation was removed from the register. 

Under Mary, if there was some court servility there was also 
some public spirit. "When the Queen created her husband Philip 
a knight, an obsequious herald, out of compliment to the "joint- 
sovereigns," took down the arms of England in the chapel at 
Windsor, and was about to set up those of Spain. This, however, 
was forbidden " by certain lords," and brave men they were, for 
in such a display of English spirit there was peril of incurring 
the ill-will of Mary, who was never weary of heaping favors on 
the foreign King-consort, whom she would have made generalis- 
simo of her forces if she had dared. It is a curious fact that 
Philip was not ejected from the order, even when he had de- 
spatched the Spanish Armada to devastate the dominions of the 
sovereign. 

In illustration of the fact that the Garter never left the leg of a 
knight of the order, there are some lines by the Elizabethan poet 
Peele, which are very apt to the occasion. Speaking of the Earl 
of Bedford, Peele says — 

— " Dead is Bedford ! virtuous and renowned 
Eor arms, for honor, and religious love ; 
And yet alive his name in Fame's records, 
That held his Garter dear, and wore it well. 
Some worthy wight but blazon his deserts : 
Only a tale I thought on by the way, 
As I observed his honorable name. 
I heard it was his chance, o'erta'en with sleep, 
To take a nap near to a farmer's lodge. 
Trusted a little with himself belike, 
This aged earl in his apparel plain, 
"Wrapt in his russet gown, lay down to rest, 
His badge of honor buckled to his leg. 
Bare and naked. There came a pilfering swad 
And would have preyed upon this ornament 
Essayed t' unbuckle it, thinking bim asleep. 
♦ The noble gentleman, feeling what he meant — 
' Hold, foolish lad,' quoth he, ' a better prey : 
' This Garter is not fit for ev'ry leg, 
' And I account it better than my purse. 
The varlet ran away, the earl awaked. 
And told his friends, and smiling said withal, 



GARTERIANA. 155 

1 'A would not, had 'a understood the French 

' Writ on my Garter, dared t' have stol'n the same.' 

This tale I thought upon, told me for truth, 

The rather for it praised the Posy, 

Right grave and honorable, that importeth much — 

'Evil be to him/ it saith, 'that evil thinks.' " 

Elizabeth was distinguished for loving to hold newly-chosen 
knights in suspense, before she ratified their election by her ap- 
proval. The anniversary banquets too fell into disuse during her 
reign, and she introduced the most unworthy knight that had ever 
stood upon the record of the order. This was Charles IX. of 
France. On the other hand she sent the Garter to Henri Quatre. 
He was the last French monarch who was a companion of the 
order, till the reign of Louis XVIII. On the day the latter came 
up from Hartwell to Stanmore, on his way to France, at the period 
of the first restoration, the Prince Regent invested him with 
the brilliant insignia at Carlton House. It was on this occasion 
Louis XVIII. observed that he was the first King of France who 
had worn the garter since the period of Henri Quatre. Louis had 
erased his own name from the Golden Book of Nobility of Venice, 
when he heard that the name of Bonaparte had been inserted 
therein. He, perhaps, would have declined receiving the Garter, 
if he could have foreseen that the royal niece of the Prince Re- 
gent would, in after years, confer the order on the imperial nephew 
of Napoleon. 

The period of James is marked by some pretty quarrels among 
the officials. Thus at the installation of Prince Henry, there was 
a feast which was well nigh turned into a fray. At the very be- 
ginning of it, the prebends and heralds fell to loggerheads on the 
delicate question of precedency. The alms-knights mingled in the 
quarrel by siding with the prebends, and claiming the next degree 
of precedency before the heralds. Reference was made to the 
Earls of Nottingham and Worcester. The referees adjudged the 
heralds to have right of precedency before the prebends. There- 
upon the proud prebends, oblivious of Christian humility, refused 
to go to church at the tail of the heralds. The latter went in ex- 
ultingly without them, and the prebends would not enter until a 
long time had elapsed, so that it could not be said they followed 



156 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

the gentlemen of the tabard. The delicate question was again 
angrily discussed, and at length referred to the whole body of 
knights. The noble fraternity, after grave deliberation, finally 
determined that on the next day of St. George, being Sunday, in 
the procession to the church, the alms-knights should go first, then 
the pursuivants of arms, then the prebends (many of whom were 
doctors of divinity), and finally the heralds. The latter were cun- 
ning rogues, and no inconsiderable authority in matters of prece- 
dency ; and they immediately declared that the knights had decreed 
to them the better place, inasmuch as that in most processions the 
principal personages did not walk first. 

Of the knights of this reign, Grave Maurice, Prince of Orange, 
and Frederick the (Goody) Palsgrave of the Rhine, were among 
the most celebrated. They were installed in 1613, the Prince by 
proxy, and the Palsgrave in person. A young and graceful 
Count Ludovic of Nassau, was chosen at the last moment, to rep- 
resent the Prince, whose appointed representative, Count Henry, 
was detained in Holland by adverse winds. " The feast," says an 
eye-witness, " was in the Great Hall, where the king dined at the 
upper table alone, served in state by the Lord Gerard as Sewer, 
the Lord Morris as Cupbearer, the Lord Compton as Carver ; all 
that were of the order, at a long cross table across the hall. The 
Prince by himself alone, and the Palatine a little distance from 
him. But the Count Nassau was ranged over-against my Lord 
Admiral, and so took place of all after the Sovereign Princes, not 
without a little muttering of our Lords, who would have had him 
ranged according to seniority, if the king had not overruled it by 
prerogative." 

Wilson, in his history of James I., narrates a curious anec- 
dote respecting this Grave Maurice and the ribbon of the 
order. " Prince Maurice took it as a great honor to be admit- 
ted into the Fraternity of that Order, and wore it constantly ; till 
afterward, some villains at the Hague, that met the reward of their 
demerit (one of them, a Frenchman, being groom of the Prince's 
chamber) robbed a jeweller of Amsterdam that, brought jewels to 
the Prince. This groom, tempting him into his chamber, to see 
some jewels, there, with his confederates, strangled the man with 
one of the Prince's Blue Ribbons ; which being afterward discov- 



GARTERIANA. 157 

ered, the Prince would never suffer so fatal an instrument to come 
about his neck." 

James, by raising his favorite Buckingham, then only Sir George 
Villiers, to the degree of Knight of the Garter, was considered tc 
have as much outraged the order as Henry VIII. had done by 
investing Cromwell with the insignia. Chamberlain, in a letter to 
Sir Dudley Carleton, says, " The King went away the next day 
after St. George's Feast, toward Newmarket and Thetford, the 
Earl of Rutland and Sir George Villiers being that morning 
elected into the order of the Garter, which seemed at first a strange 
choice, in regard that the wife of the former is an open and known 
recusant, and he is said to have many dangerous people about him ; 
and the latter is so lately come into the sight of the world, and 
withal it is doubted that he had not sufficient likelihood to maintain 
the dignity of the place, according to express articles of the order. 
But to take away that scruple, the King hath bestowed upon him 
the Lord Gray's lands, and means, they say, to mend his grant 
with much more, not far distant, in the present possession of the 
Earl of Somerset, if he do cadere causa and sink in the business 
now in hand." The last passage alludes to the murder of Over- 
bury. 

The going down to Windsor was at this time a pompous spec- 
tacle. The riding thither of the Knights Elect is thus spoken of 
by a contemporary: "On Monday," (St. George's day, 1615), 
" our Knights of the Garter, Lord Fenton and Lord Knollys, ride 
to Windsor, with great preparation to re-vie one with another who 
shall make the best show. Though I am of opinion the latter 
will carry it by many degrees, by reason of the alliance with the 
houses of the Howards, Somerset, Salisbury, and Dorset, with 
many other great, families that will bring him their friends, and 
most part of the pensioners. Yet most are persuaded the other 
will bear away the bell, as having the best part of the court, all 
the bed-chamber, all the prince's servants and followers, with a 
hundred of the Guard, that have new rich coats made on purpose, 
besides Sir George Villiers (the favorite), and Mr. Secretary — 
whose presence had been better forborne, in my judgment, for 
many reasons — but that every man abound in his own sense." 
Jam^s endeavored to suppress, in some measure, the expensive 



158 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

ride of the Knights Elect to "Windsor, but only with partial suc- 
cess. His attempted reform, too, had a selfish aspect ; he tried to 
make it profitable to himself. He prohibited the giving of livery 
coats, " for saving charge and avoiding emulation," and at the same 
time ordered that all existing as well as future companions should 
present a piece of plate of the value of twenty pounds sterling at 
least for the use of the altar in St. George's Chapel. 

Charles I. held chapters in more places in England than any 
other king — now at York, now at Nottingham, now at Oxford, 
and in other localities. These chapters were sometimes attended 
by as few as four knights, and for the most part they were shorn 
of much of the ancient ceremony. He held some brilliant chap- 
ters at Windsor, nevertheless. At one of them, the election of 
the Earl of Northumberland inspired a bard, whose song I subjoin 
because it is illustrative of several incidents which are far from 
lacking interest. 

" A brief description of the triumphant show made by the Eight 
Honorable Aulgernon Percie Earl of Northumberland, at his in- 
stallation and initiation into the princely fraternity of the Garter, 
on the 13th of May, 1635." 

To the tune of " Quell the Pride." 

" You noble buds of Britain, 

That spring from honor's tree, 
Who love to hear of high designs, 

Attend awhile to me. 
And I'll (in brief) discover what 
Fame bids me take in hand — 
To blaze 
The praise 
Of great Northumberland. 

" The order of the Garter, 

Ere since third Edward reigned 
Unto the realm of England hath 

A matchless honor gained. 

The world hath no society, 

Like to this princely band, 

To raise 

The praise 

Of great Northumberland. 



GARTERIANA. 159 

( The honor of his pedigree 

Doth claim a high regard, 
And many of his ancestors 

For fame thought nothing hard. 

And he, through noble qualities, 

Which are exactly scanned, 

Doth raise 

The praise 

Of great Northumberland. 

'Against the clay appointed, 

His lordship did prepare ; 

To publish his magnificence 

No charges he did spare. 

The like within man's memory 

Was never twice in hand 

To raise 

The praise 

Of great Northumberland. 

' Upon that day it seemed 
All Brittany did strive, 
And did their best to honor him 
With all they could contrive. 
For all our high nobility 
Joined in a mutual land 
To blaze 
The praise 
Of great Northumberland. 

' The common eyes were dazzled 

With wonder to behold 
The lustre of apparel rich, 

All silver, pearl, and gold, 

Which on brave coursers mounted, 

Did glisten through the Strand, 

To blaze 

The praise 

Of great Northumberland. 

' But ere that I proceed 

This progress to report, 
I should have mentioned the feast 

Made at Salisbury Court. 
Almost five hundred dishes 



160 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

Did on the table stand, 

To raise 

The praise 
Of great Northumberland." 



The Second Part, to tJie same tune. 

' The mightiest prince or monarch 

That in the world doth reign, 
At such a sumptuous banquet might 

Have dined without disdain, 

Where sack, like conduit water, 

"Was free ever at command, 

To blaze 

The praise 

Of great Northumberland. 

: The famous Fleet-street conduit, 

Renowned so long ago, 
Did not neglect to express what love 

She to my lord did owe. 
For like an old proud woman 
The painted face doth stand 
To blaze 
The praise 
Of great Northumberland. 

: A number of hrave gallants, 

Some knights and some esquires, 
Attended at this triumph great, 

Clad in complete attires. 
The silver half-moon gloriously 
Upon their sleeves doth stand, 
To blaze 
The praise 
Of great Northumberland. 

' All these on stately horses, 
That ill endured the bit, 
Were mounted in magnific cost, 

As to the time was fit. 
Their feathers white and red did show, 
Like to a martial band, 
To blaze 
The praise 
Of great Northumberland. 



GARTER! ANA. 161 

" The noble earls and viscounts, 
And barons, rode in state : 
This great and high solemnity 

All did congratulate. 
To honor brave Earl Percy 
Each put a helping hand 
To blaze 
The praise 
Of great Northumberland. 

" King Charles, our royal sovereign. 
And his renowned Mary, 
With Britain's hope, their progeny, 

All lovingly did tarry 
At noble Viscount Wimbleton's, 
r the fairest part o' th' Strand, 
To blaze 
The prai&e 
Of great Northumberland. 

u To famous Windsor Castle, 
With all his gallant train, 
Earl Pearcy went that afternoon 

His honor to obtain. 
And there he was installed 
One of St. George's band, 
To blaze 
The praise 
Of great Northumberland. 

* Long may he live in honor, 

In plenty and in peace ; 
For him, and all his noble friends. 

To pray I'll never cease. 
This ditty (which I now will end) 
Was only ta'en in hand 
To blaze 
The praise 
Of great Northumberland." 

This illustrative ballad bears the initials "M. P.'* These, 
probably, do not imply either a member of Parliament, or of the 
house of Percy. Beneath the initials we have the legend, " Printed 
at London, for Francis Coules, and are" (verses subaudiuntur) " to 
be sold at his shop in the Old Bayley." There are three wood- 
cuts to illustrate the text, The first represents the Earl on horse- 

11 



162 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

back ; both peer and charger are very heavily caparisoned, and 
the steed looks as intelligent as the peer. In front of this stately, 
solid, and leisurely pacing couple, is a mounted serving-man, 
armed with a stick, and riding full gallop at nobody. The illustra- 
tion to the second part represents the Earl returning from Wind- 
sor in a carriage, which looks very much like the Araba in the 
Turkish Exhibition. The new Knight wears his hat, cloak, collar 
and star ; his figure, broad-set to the doorway, bears no distant 
resemblance to the knave of clubs, and his aristocratic self-posses- 
sion and serenity are remarkable, considering the bumping he is 
getting, as implied by the Avheels of his chariot being several 
inches off the ground. The pace of the steeds, two and twohalves 
of whom are visible, is not, however, very great. They are hardly 
out of a walk. But perhaps the bareheaded coachman and the 
as bareheaded groom have just pulled them up, to allow the run- 
ning footmen to reach the carriage. Two of these are seen near 
the rear of the vehicle, running like the brace of mythological 
personages in Ovid, who ran the celebrated match in which the 
apples figured so largely. The tardy footmen have just come in 
sight of their lord, who does not allow his serenity to be disturbed 
by chiding them. The Percy wears as stupid an air as his ser- 
vants, and the only sign of intelligence anywhere in the group is 
to be found in the off-side wheeler, whose head is turned back, 
with a sneering cast in the face, as if he were ridiculing the idea of 
the whole show, and was possessed with the conviction that he was 
drawing as foolish a beast as himself. 

The Earl appears to have ridden eastward, in the direction 
pointed by his own lion's tale, before he drove down to Windsor. 
The show seems to have interested all ranks between the Crown 
and the Conduit in Fleet street. Where Viscount Wimbledon's 
house was, " in the fairest part of the Strand," I can not conjecture, 
and as I can not find information on this point in Mr. Peter Cun- 
ningham's " Hand-Book of London," I conclude that the site is not 
known. 

In connection with Charles I. and his Garter, I will here cite a 
passage from the third volume of Mr. Macaulay's " History of 
England," page 165. " Louvois hated Lauzun. Lauzun was a 
favorite at St. Germains. He wore the Garter, a badge of honor 



GARTERIANA. 163 

which has very seldom been conferred on aliens who were not 
sovereign princes. It was believed, indeed, in the French court, 
that in order to distinguish him from the other knights of the most 
illustrious of European orders, he had been decorated with that 
very George which Charles I. had, on the scaffold, put into the 
hands of Juxon." Lauzun, I shall have to notice under the head 
of foreign knights. I revert here to the George won by Charles 
and given to Lauzun. It was a very extraordinary jewel, curiously 
cut in an onyx, set about with twenty-one large table diamonds, in 
the fashion of a garter. On the under side of the George was the 
portrait of Henrietta Maria, " rarely well limned," says Ashmole, 
'• and set in a case of gold, the lid neatly enamelled with gold- 
smith's work, and surrounded with another Garter, adorned with 
a like number of equal-sized diamonds, as was the foresaid." The 
onyx George of Charles I. was in the possession of the late Duke 
of Wellington, and is the property of the present Duke. 

There is something quite as curious touching the history of the 
Garter worn by Charles I., as what Mr. Macaulay tells concern- 
ing the George. The diamonds upon it, forming the motto, were 
upward of four hundred in number. On the day of the execution, 
this valuable ornament fell into the hands of one of Cromwell's 
captains of cavalry, named Pearson. After one exchange of 
hands, it was sold to John Ireton, sometime Lord-Mayor of Lon- 
don, for two hundred and five pounds. At the Restoration, a 
commission was appointed to look after the scattered royal prop- 
erty generally ; and the commissioners not only recovered some 
pictures belonging to Charles, from Mrs. Cromwell, who had placed 
them in charge of a tradesman in Thames street, but they discov- 
ered that Ireton held the Garter, and they summoned him to de- 
liver it up accordingly. It has been said that the commissioners 
offered him the value of the jewel if he would surrender it. This 
is not the case. The report had been founded on a misapprehen- 
sion of terms. Ireton did not deny that he possessed the Garter 
by purchase, whereupon " composition was offered him, according 
to the direction of the Commission, as in all other like cases where 
anything could not be had in kind." That is, he was ordered to 
surrender the jewel, or if this had been destroyed, its value, or 
some compensation in lieu thereof. Ireton refused the terms alto- 



164 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS 

gether. The King, Charles II., thereupon sued him in the Court 
of King's Bench, where the royal plaintiff obtained a verdict for 
two hundred and five pounds, and ten pounds costs of suit. " 

In February, 1652, the Parliament abolished all titles and hon- 
ors conferred by Charles I. since the 4th of January, two years 
previously. This was done on the ground that the late King had 
conferred such titles and honors, in order to promote his wicked 
and treacherous designs against the parliament and people of En- 
gland. A fine of one hundred pounds was decreed against every 
offender, whenever he employed the abolished title, with the ex- 
ception of a knight, who was let off at the cheaper rate of forty 
pounds. Any one convicted of addressing a person by any of the 
titles thus done away with, was liable to a fine of ten shillings. 
The Parliament treated with silent contempt the titles and orders 
of knighthood conferred by Charles I. As monarchy was defunct, 
these adjuncts of monarchy were considered as defunct also. The 
Protector did not create a single Knight of the Garter, nor of the 
Bath. "These orders," says Nicolas, "were never formally abol- 
ished, but they were probably considered so inseparably united to 
the person, name, and office of a king, as to render it impossible 
for any other authority to create them." Cromwell, however, made 
one peer, Howard, Viscount Howard of Morpeth, ten baronets and 
knights, and conferred certain degrees of precedency. It was sel- 
dom that he named an unworthy person, considering the latter in 
the Protector's own point of view, but the Restoration was no 
sooner an accomplished fact, when to ridicule one of Oliver's 
knights was a matter of course with the hilarious dramatic poets. 
On this subject something will be found under the head of " Stage 
Knights." Meanwhile, although there is nothing to record touch- 
ing Knights of the Garter, under the Commonwealth, we may no- 
tice an incident showing that Garter King-at-arms was not alto- 
gether idle. This incident will be sufficiently explained by the 
following extract from the third volume of Mr. Macaulay's " His- 
tory of England." The author is speaking of the regicide Ludlow, 
who, since the Restoration, had been living in exile at Geneva. 
" The Revolution opened a new prospect to him. The right of 
the people to resist oppression, a right which, during many years, 
no man could assert without exposing himself to ecclesiastical an- 



GARTERIANA. 165 

athenias and to civil penalties, had been solemnly recognised by 
the Estates of the realm, and had been proclaimed by Garter 
King-at-arrns, on the very spot where the memorable scaffold had 
been set up." 

Charles II. did not wait for the Restoration in order to make or 
unmake knights. He did not indeed hold chapters, but at St. 
Germains, in Jersey, and other localities, he unknighted knights 
who had forgotten their allegiance in the " late horrid rebellion," 
as he emphatically calls the Parliamentary and Cromwellian 
periods, and authorized other individuals to wear the insignia, 
while he exhorted them to wait patiently and hopefully for their 
installations at Windsor. At St. Germains, he gave the Garter to 
his favorite Buckingham ; and from Jersey he sent it to two far 
better men — Montrose, and Stanley, Earl of Derby. The worst 
enemies of these men could not deny their chivalrous qualities. 
Montrose on the scaffold, when they hung (in derision) from his 
neck the book in which were recorded his many brave deeds, very 
aptly said that he wore the record of his courage with as much 
pride as he ever wore the Garter. Stanley's chivalry was never 
more remarkable than in the skirmish previous to Worcester, when 
in the hot affray, he received seven shots in his breast-plate, thir- 
teen cuts on his beaver, five or six wounds on his arms and shoul- 
ders, and had two horses killed under him. When he was about 
to die, he returned the Garter, by the hands of a faithful servant, 
to the king, " in all humility and gratitude," as he remarked, " spot- 
less and free from any stain, as he received it, according to the 
honorable example of my ancestors." 

Charles made knights of the Garter of General Monk and Ad- 
miral Montague. The chapter for election was held in the Abbey 
of St. Augustine's at Canterbury. It was the first convenient place 
which the king could find for such a purpose after landing. " They 
were the only two," says Pepys, " for many years who had the 
Garter given them before they had honor of earldom, or the like, 
excepting only the Duke of Buckingham, who was only Sir George 
Villiers when he was made a knight of the Garter." The honor 
was offered to Clarendon, but declined as above his deserts, and 
likely to create him enemies. James, Duke of York, however, 
angrily attributed Clarendon's objection to being elected to the 



166 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

Garter to the fact that James himself had asked it for him, and 
that the Chancellor was foolishly unwilling to accept any honor 
that was to be gained by the Duke's mediation. 

Before proceeding to the next reign, let me remark that the 
George and Garter of Charles II. had as many adventures or mis- 
adventures as those of his father. In the fight at Worcester his 
collar and garter became the booty of Cromwell, who despatched 
a messenger with them to the Parliament, as a sign and trophy of 
victory. The king's lesser George, set with diamonds, was pre- 
served by Colonel Blague. It passed through several hands with 
much risk. It at length fell again into the hands of the Colonel 
when he was a prisoner in the Tower. Blague, " considering it 
had already passed so many clangers, was persuaded it could yet 
secure one hazardous attempt of his own." The enthusiastic roy- 
alist looked upon it as a talisman that would rescue him from cap- 
tivity. Bight or wrong in his sentiment, the result was favorable. 
He succeeded in making his escape, and had the gratification of 
restoring the George to his sovereign. 

The short reign of James II. offers nothing worthy of the notice 
of the general reader with respect to this decoration; and the 
same may be said of the longer reign of William III. The little 
interest in the history of the order under Queen Anne, is in con- 
nection with her foreign nominations, of which due notice will be 
found in the succeeding section. Small, too, is the interest connect- 
ed with these matters in the reign of George I., saving, indeed, that 
under him we find the last instance of the degradation of a knight 
of the garter, in the person of James, Duke of Ormund, who had 
been attainted of high treason. His degradation took place on the 
12th July, 1716. The elections were numerous during this reign. 
The only one that seems to demand particular notice is that of 
Sir Robert Walpole, First Lord of the Treasury. He gave up 
the Bath on receiving the Garter in 1726, and he was the only 
commoner who had received the distinction since Sir George Monk 
and Sir Edward Montague were created, sixty-six years previously. 

The first circumstance worthy of record under George II. is, 
that the color of the garter and ribbon was changed from light 
blue to dark, or " Garter-blue," as it is called. This was done in 
order to distinguish the companions made by Brunswick from 



GARTERIANA. 167 

those assumed to be fraudulently created by the Pretender Stuart. 
Another change was effected, but much less felicitously. What 
with religious, social, and political revolution, it was found that the 
knights were swearing to statutes which they could not observe. 
Their consciences were disturbed thereat — at least they said so; 
but their sovereign set them at ease by enacting that in future all 
knights should promise to break no statutes, except on dispensation 
from the sovereign ! This left the matter exactly where it had 
been previously. 

The first circumstance worthy of attention in the reign of 
George III., was that of the election of Earl Gower, president 
of the council, in 1771. The sharp eye of Junius discovered that 
the election was a farce, for in place of the sovereign and at least 
six knights being present, as the statutes required, there were only 
four knights present, the Dukes of Gloucester, Newcastle, Nor- 
thumberland, and the Earl of Hertford. The first duke too was 
there against his will. He had, says Junius, " entreated, begged, 
and implored," to be excused from attending that chapter — but all 
in vain. The new knight seems to have been illegally elected, 
and as illegally installed. The only disagreeable result was to the 
poor knights of Windsor. People interested in the subject had 
made remarks, and while the illegal election of the president of 
the coimcil was most properly put before the King, representation 
was made to him that the poor knights had been wickedly contra- 
vening their statutes, for a very long period. They had for years 
been permitted to reside with their families wherever they chose 
to fix their residence. This was pronounced irregular, and George 
IH., so lax with regard to Lord Gower, was very strict with re- 
spect to these poor knights. They were all commanded to reside 
in their apartments attached to Windsor Castle, and there keep 
up the poor dignity of their noble order, by going to church twice 
every day in full uniform. There were some of them at that 
period who would as soon have gone out twice a day to meet the 
dragon. 

The order of the Garter was certainly ill-used by this sovereign. 
In order to admit all his sons, he abolished the statute of Edward 
(who had as many sons as George had when he made the absurd 
innovation, but who did not care to make knights of them because 



168 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

they were his sons), confining the number of companions to 
twenty-five. Henceforward, the sovereign's sons were to reckon 
only as over and above that number. As if this was not suffi- 
ciently absurd, the king subsequently decreed eligibility of election 
to an indefinite number of persons, provided only that they could 
trace their descent from King George II. ! 

No Companion so well deserved the honor conferred upon him 
as he who was the most illustrious of the English knights created 
during the sway of the successor of George III., as Regent; 
namely, the late Duke of Wellington. Mr. Macaulay, when de- 
tailing the services and honors conferred on Schomberg, has a pas- 
sage in which he brings the names of these two warriors, dukes, 
and knights of the Garter, together. " The House of Commons 
had, with general approbation, compensated the losses of Schom- 
berg, and rewarded his services by a grant of a hundred thousand 
pounds. Before he set out for Ireland, he requested permission 
to express his gratitude for this magnificent present. A chair was 
set for him within the bar. He took his seat there with the mace 
at his right hand, rose, and in a few graceful words returned his 
thanks and took his leave. The Speaker replied that the Com- 
mons could never forget the obligation under which they already 
lay to his Grace, that they saw him with pleasure at the head of 
an English army, that they felt entire confidence in his zeal and 
ability, and that at whatever distance he might be he would always 
be, in a peculiar manner, an object of their care. The precedent 
set on this interesting occasion was followed with the utmost mi- 
nuteness, a hundred and twenty-five years later, on an occasion 
more interesting still. Exactly on the same spot, on which, in 
July, 1689, Schomberg had acknowledged the liberality of the 
nation, a chair was set in July, 1814, for a still more illustrious 
warrior, who came to return thanks for a still more splendid mark 
of public gratitude." 

There is nothing calling for particular notice in the history of 
the Order since the election of the last-named knight. Not one 
on whose shoulders has been placed "the robe of heavenly color," 
earned so hardly and so well the honor of companionship. This 
honor, however, costs every knight who submits to the demand, 
not less than one hundred and eight pounds sterling, in fees. It 



GARTERIANA. 169 

is, in itself, a heavy fine inflicted on those who render extraordi- 
nary service to the country, and to whom are presented the order 
of the Garter, and an order from the Garter King-at-arms to pay 
something more than a hundred guineas in return. The fine, 
however, is generally paid with alacrity ; for, though the non-pay- 
ment does not unmake a knight, it has the effect of keeping his 
name from the register. 

I have already observed tKat Mr. Macaulay, in his recently- 
published History, has asserted that very few foreigners, except 
they were sovereign princes, were ever admitted into the compan- 
ionship of the Garter. Let us, then, look over the roll of illustri- 
ous aliens, and see how far this assertion is correct. 



170 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 



FOREIGN KNIGHTS OF THE GARTER. 

There is some error in Mr. Macaulay's statement, which, as a 
matter of history, may be worth correcting. So far from there 
having been few aliens, except sovereign princes, admitted into 
the order, the fact, save in recent times, is exactly the reverse. 
The order contemplated the admission of foreigners, from the 
very day of its foundation. On that day, three foreigners were 
admitted, none of whom was a sovereign prince. Not one of the 
foreign sovereigns with whom Edward was in alliance, nor any of 
the royal relatives of the Queen, were among the original com- 
panions. The aliens, who were not sovereign princes, were the 
Captal de Buch, a distinguished Gascon nobleman, and two ban- 
nerets or knights, who with the other original companions had 
served in the expeditions sent by Edward against France. 

Again, under Richard H., among the most famous alien gentle- 
men created knights of the Garter, were the Gascon soldier Du 
Preissne ; Soldan de la Tour, Lord of much land in Xaintonge ; 
the Dutch Count William of Ostervant, who made a favor of ac- 
cepting the honorable badge ; the Duke of Bavaria (not yet Em- 
peror), and Albert, Duke of Holland, who was hardly a sovereign 
prince, but who, nevertheless, may be accounted as such, seeing 
that, in a small way indeed, more like a baron than a monarch, he 
exercised some sovereign rights. The Duke of Britanny may, 
with more justice, be included in the list of sovereign dukes who 
were members of the order. Under Henry IV., neither alien 
noble nor foreign prince appears to have been elected, but under 
his successor, fifth of the name, Eric X., King of Denmark, and 
John I., King of Portugal, were created companions. They were 
the first kings regnant admitted to the order. Some doubt exists 
as to the date of their admission, but none as to their having been 



FOREIGN KNIGHTS OF THE GARTER. 171 

knights' companions. Dabrichecourt is the name of a gentleman 
lucky enough to have been also elected during this reign, but I do 
not know if he were of foreign birth or foreign only by descent. 
The number of the fraternity became complete in this reign, by 
the election of the Emperor Sigismund. Under Henry V., the 
foreign sovereign princes, members of the order, were unquestion- 
ably more numerous than the mere alien ge"htlemen ; but reckon- 
ing from the foundation, there had been a greater number of for- 
eign knights not of sovereign quality than of those who were. 
The sovereign princes did not seem to care so much for the honor 
as private gentlemen in foreign lands. Thus the German, Sir 
Hartook von Clux, accepted the honor with alacrity, but the King 
of Denmark allowed five years to pass before he intimated that he 
cheerfully or resignedly tendered his acceptance. At the first an- 
niversary festival of the Order, held under Henry VI., as many 
robes of the order were made for alien knights not sovereign 
princes, as for gartered monarchs of foreign birth. The foreign 
princes had so little appreciated the honor of election, that when 
the Sovereign Duke of Burgundy was proposed, under Henry VI., 
the knights would not go to election until that potentate had de- 
clared whether he would accept the honor. His potentiality 
declared very distinctly that he would not ; and he is the first 
sovereign prince who positively refused to become a knight of the 
Garter ! In the same reign Edward, King of Portugal, was elected 
in the place of his father, John : — this is one of the few instances 
in which the honor has passed from father to son. The Duke of 
Coimbra, also elected in this reign, was of a foreign princely house, 
but he was not a sovereign prince. He may reckon with the 
alien knights generally. The Duke of Austria too, Albert, was 
elected before he came to a kingly and to an imperial throne ; and 
against these princes I may place the name of Gaston de Foix, 
whom Henry V. had made Earl of Longueville, as that of a sim- 
ple alien knight of good estate and knightly privileges. One or 
two scions of royal houses were elected, as was Alphonso, King 
of Aragon. But there is strong reason for believing that Alphonso 
declined the honor. There is some uncertainty as to the period 
of the election of Frederick III., that economical Emperor of 
Austria, who begged to know what the expenses would amount to, 



172 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

before he would " accept the order." All the garters not home- 
distributed, did not go to deck the legs of foreign sovereign princes. 
Toward the close of the reign we find the Vicomte de Chastillion 
elected, and also D'Ahnada, the Portuguese knight of whose jolly 
installation at the Lion in Brentford, I have already spoken. An 
Aragonese gentleman, Francis de Surienne, was another alien 
knight of simply noble quality ; he was elected in the King's bed- 
chamber at Westminster ; and the alien knights would more than 
balance the foreign sovereign princes, even if we throw in Casimir, 
King of Poland, who was added to the confraternity under the 
royal Lancastrian. 

The first foreigner whom Edward IV. raised to companionship 
in the order, was not a prince, but a private gentleman named 
Gaillard Duras or Durefort. The honor was conferred in ac- 
knowledgment of services rendered to the King, in France ; and 
the new knight was very speedily deprived of it, for traitorously 
transferring his services to the King of France. Of the foreign 
monarchs who are said to have been elected companions, during 
this reign — namely, the Kings of Spain and Portugal — there is 
much doubt whether the favor was conferred at all. The Dukes 
of Ferrara and Milan were created knights, and these may be 
reckoned among ducal sovereigns, although less than kings ; and let 
me add that, if the Kings of .Spain and Portugal were elected, the 
elections became void, because these monarchs failed to send 
proxies to take possession of their stalls. Young Edward V. 
presided at no election, and his uncle and successor, Richard III., 
received no foreign prince into the order. At the installation, 
however, of the short-lived son of Richard, that sovereign created 
Geoffrey de Sasiola, embassador from the Queen of Spain, a knight, 
by giving him three blows on the shoulders with a sword, and by 
investing him with a gold collar. 

Henry VII. was not liberal toward foreigners with the many 
garters which fell at his disposal, after Bosworth, and during his 
reign. He appears to have exchanged with Maximilian, the Gar- 
ter for the Golden Fleece, and to have conferred the same decora- 
tion on one or two heirs to foreign thrones, who were not sover- 
eign ( princes when elected. It was not often that these princes 
were installed in person. Such installation, however, did occasion- 



FOREIGN KNIGHTS OF THE GARTER. 173 

ally happen ; and never was one more singular in its origin and 
circumstances, than that of Philip, Archduke of Austria. Philip 
had resolved to lay claim to the throne of Spain by right of his 
wile Joan, daughter of Ferdinand of Castile and Aragon. He 
was on his way to Spain, when foul winds and a tempestuous sea 
drove him into \Yeymouth. Henry invited him to Windsor, 
treated him with great hospitality, and installed him Knight of the 
Garter. Philip " took the oath to observe the statutes, without 
any other qualification than that he might not be obliged to attend 
personally at the chapters, or to wear the collar, except at his own 
pleasure. In placing the collar round his neck, and in conducting 
him to his stall, Henry addressed him as ' Mon fils,' while Philip, 
in return, called the King ' Mon pere,' and these affectionate ap- 
pellations are repeated in the treaty of peace and unity between 
.the two countries, which was signed by Henry and Philip, while 
sitting in their respective stalls, and to the maintenance of which 
they were both then solemnly sworn. Previously to the offering, 
Philip wished to stand before his stall, like the other knights, and 
to follow the King to the altar, requesting to be allowed to do his 
duty as a knight and brother of the order ought to do to the sover- 
eign ; but Henry declined, and taking him by the left hand, the 
two Kings offered together. After the ceremony, Philip invested 
Henry, Prince of Wales, with the collar of the Golden Fleece, 
into which order he had, it is said, been elected at Middleburgh in 
the preceding year," 1506. 

Under Henry YIH. we find the first Scottish monarch who ever 
wore the Garter, namely James V. He accepted the insignia 
" with princely heart and will," but, in a formal instrument, he set 
down the statutes which he would swear to observe, and he re- 
jected all others. Francis, King of France, Charles V., Em- 
peror of Germany, and Ferdinand, King of Hungary, were also 
members of the order. But the sovereign princes elected during 
this reign did not outnumber the alien knights of less degree. 
When Henry was at Calais, he held a chapter, at which Marshal 
Montmorency, Count de Beaumont, and Philip de Chabot, Count 
de Neublanc, were elected into the order. This occasion was the 
first and only time that the Kings of England and France at- 
tended together and voted as companions in the chapters of their 



174 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

respective orders. Like the other knights, Francis nominated for 
election into the Garter, three earis or persons of higher degree, 
three barons, and three knights-bachelors, and the names present 
an interesting fact, which has not been generally noticed. Henry 
was then enamored of Anne Boleyn, whom he had recently 
created Marchioness of Pembroke, and who accompanied him to 
Calais. With a solitary exception, the French King gave all his 
suffrages for his own countrymen, and as the exception was in 
favor of her brother, George, Lord Rochford, it was evidently in- 
tended as a compliment to the future Queen of England. 

It was the intention of Edward VI. to have created Lewis, 
Marquis of Gonzaga, a knight of the order, but there is no evidence 
that he was elected. It is difficult to ascertain the exact course of 
things during this reign ; for Mary, subsequently, abrogated all the 
changes made by Edward, in order to adopt the statutes to the ex- 
igencies of the reformed religion. She did even more than this ; 
she caused the register to be defaced, by erasing every insertion 
which was not in accordance with the Romish faith. It is known, 
however, that Henri II. of France was elected. His investiture 
took place in a bed-room of the Louvre in Paris. He rewarded 
the Garter King-at-arms with a gold chain worth two hundred 
pounds, and his own royal robe, ornmented with "aglets," and 
worth twenty -five pounds. Against this one sovereign prince we 
have to set the person of an alien knight — the Constable of 
France. The foreign royal names on the list were, however, on 
the accession of Mary, three against one of foreign knights of lower 
degree. That of Philip of Spain soon made the foreign royal ma- 
jority still greater ; and this majority may be said to have been 
further increased by the election of the sovereign Duke of Savoy. 
Mary elected no foreign knight beneath the degree of sovereign 
ruler — whether king or duke. 

Elizabeth very closely followed the same principle. Her foreign 
knights were sovereigns, or about to become so. The first was 
Adolphus, Duke of Holstein, son of the King of Denmark, and 
heir of Norway. The second was Charles IX. of France, and the 
third, Frederick, King of Denmark; the Emperor Rudolf was, 
perhaps, a fourth ; and the fifth, Henri Quatre, the last king of 
France who wore the Garter till the accession of Louis XVni. 



FOREIGN KNIGHTS OF THE GARTER. 175 

As for the Spanish widower of Mary, Sir Harris Nicholas ob- 
serves, " Philip, king of Spain, is said to have returned the Garter 
by the hands of the Queen's ambassador, Viscount Montague, who 
had been sent to induce him to renew the alliance between England 
and Burgundy. Philip did not conceal his regret at the change 
which had taken place in the religion and policy of his country ; 
but he displayed no sectarian bitterness, expresses himself still de- 
sirous of opposing the designs of the French, who sought to have 
Elizabeth excommunicated, and stated that he had taken measures 
to prevent this in the eyes of a son of the Church of Rome, the 
greatest of all calamities, from befalling her, without her own con- 
sent. It appears, however, that Elizabeth did not accept of Philip's 
resignation of the Garter, for he continued a companion until his 
decease, notwithstanding the war between England and Spain, and 
the attempt to invade this country by the Spanish Armada in 
1588." 

When I say Elizabeth closely followed the example of Mary 
I should add as an instance wherein she departed therefrom — the 
election of Francis Duke of Montmorency, envoy from the French 
King. The Queen bestowed this honor on the Duke, " in grateful 
commemoration," says Camden, " of the love which Anne, consta- 
ble of France, his father, bore unto her." At the accession of 
James I., however, Henri IV. of France was the only foreigner, 
sovereign or otherwise, who wore the order of the Garter. Those 
added by James were the King of Denmark, the Prince of Orange, 
and the Prince Palatine. Of the latter I have spoken in another 
place ; I will only notice further here, that under James, all pre- 
cedence of stalls was taken away from princes below a certain 
rank ; that is to say, the last knights elected, even the King's own 
son, must take the last stall. It was also then declared "that all 
princes, not absolute, should be installed, henceforth, in the puisne 
place." 

There was one foreign knight, however, whose installation de- 
serves a word apart, for it was marked by unusual splendor, con- 
sidering how very small a potentate was the recipient of the honor. 
This was Christian, Duke of Brunswick- Wolfenbiittel. On the 
last day of the year 1624, James, with his own hands, placed the 
riband and George round the neck of the Duke. The latter was 



176 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

then twenty-four years of age. " The Duke of Brunswick," says 
Chamberlain, in a letter to Sir Dudley Carleton, January 8, 1625, 
"can not complain of his entertainment, which was eveiy way 
complete, very good and gracious words from the King, with the 
honor of the Garter, and a pension of two thousand pounds a 
year. The Prince lodged him in his own lodgings, and at parting, 
gave him three thousand pounds in gold, besides other presents." 
James conferred the Garter on no less than seven of his Scottish 
subjects. If these may be reckoned now, what they were consid- 
ered then, as mere foreigners, the alien knights will again outnum- 
ber the foreign sovereign princes, wearers of the Garter. 

The first knight invested by Charles I. was an alien chevalier, 
of only noble degree. This was the Duke de Chevreuse, who 
was Charles's proxy at his nuptials with Henrietta Maria, and who 
thus easily won the honors of chivalry among the Companions of 
St. George. It seems, however, that the honor in question was 
generally won by foreigners, because of their being engaged in 
furthering royal marriages. Thus, when the King's agent in 
Switzerland, Mr. Fleming, in the year 1633, suggested to the gov- 
ernment that the Duke of Rohan should be elected a knight of the 
Garter, Mr. Secretary Coke made reply that " The proposition 
hath this inconvenience, that the rites of that ancient order comport 
not with innovation, and no precedent can be found of any foreign 
subject ever admitted into it, if he were not employed in an inter- 
marriage with this crown, as the Duke of Chevreuse lately was." 
There certainly was not a word of truth in what the Secretary Coke 
thus deliberately stated. Not only had the Garter frequently been 
conferred on foreign subjects who had had nothing to do as matri- 
monial agents between sovereign lovers, but only twelve years after 
Coke thus wrote, Charles conferred the order upon the Duke 
d'Espernon, who had no claim to it founded upon such service as 
is noticed by the learned secretary. 

At the death of Charles I. there was not, strictly speaking, a 
single foreign sovereign prince belonging to the order. The three 
foreign princes, Rupert, "William of Orange, and the Elector Pala- 
tine, can not justly be called so. The other foreign knights were 
the Dukes of Chevreuse and Espernon. 

The foreign knights of the order created by Charles II. were 



FOREIGN KNIGHTS OF THE GARTER. 177 

Prince Edward, son of " Elizabeth of Bohemia ;" Prince Maurice, 
his elder brother; Henry, eldest son of the Duke de Thouas, 
William of Nassau, then three years of age, and subsequently our 
William III. ; Frederick, Elector of Brandenburg ; Gaspar, 
Count de Morchin ; Christian, Prince Royal of Denmark ; Charles 
XI., King of Sweden ; George, Elector of Saxony ; and Prince 
George of Denmark, husband of the Princess Anne. It will be 
seen that those who could be strictly called " sovereign princes," 
claiming allegiance and owing none, do not outnumber alien 
knights who were expected to render obedience, and could not 
sovereignly exert it. Denmark and Sweden, it may be observed, 
quarrelled about precedency of stalls with as much bitterness as if 
they had been burghers of the " Krahwinkel" of Kotzebue. 

The short reign of James II. presents us with only one alien 
Knight of the Garter, namely, Louis de Duras, created also Earl 
of Feversham. " II etait le second de son nom," says the Bio- 
graphic Universelle, " qui eut ete honore de cette decoration, re- 
marque particuliere dans la noblesse Francaise." 

The great Duke of Schomberg, that admirable warrior given 
to England by the tyranny of Louis XIV., was the first person 
invested with the Garter by William III. The other foreign 
knights invested by him were the first King of Prussia, William 
Duke of Zell, the Elector of Saxony, William Bentinck (Earl 
of Portland), Von Keppel (Earl of Albemarle), and George of 
Hanover (our George I.) Here the alien knights, not of sover- 
eign degree, again outnumbered those who were of that degree. 
The Elector of Saxony refused to join William against France, 
unless the Garter were first conferred on him. 

Anne conferred the Garter on Meinhardt Schomberg, Duke of 
Leinster, son of the great Schomberg ; and also on George Augus- 
tus of Hanover (subsequently George II. of England). Anne 
intimated to George Louis, the father of George Augustus, that, 
being a Knight of the Garter, he might very appropriately invest 
his own son. George Louis, however, hated that son, and would 
have nothing to do with conferring any dignity upon him. He 
left it with the commissioners, Halifax and Vanbrugh, to act as 
they pleased. They performed their vicarious office as they best 
could, and that was only with " maimed rights." George Louis, 

12 



178 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

with his ordinary spiteful meanness, ordered the ceremony to be 
cut short of all display. He would not even permit his son to be 
invested with the habit, under a canopy as was usual, and as had 
been done in his own case ; all that he would grant was an ordi- 
nary arm-chair, whereon the electoral prince might sit in state, 
if he chose, or was able to do so ! These were the only foreigners 
upon whom Anne conferred the Garter; an order which she 
granted willingly to very few persons indeed. 

" It is remarkable," says Nicolas, " that the order was not con- 
ferred by Queen Anne upon the Emperor, nor upon any of the 
other sovereigns with whom she was for many years confederated 
against France. Nor did her Majesty bestow it upon King 
Charles III. of Spain, who arrived in England in September, 
1703, nor upon Prince Eugene (though, when she presented him 
with a sword worth five thousand pounds sterling on taking his 
leave in March, 1712 (there were seven vacant ribands), nor any 
other of the great commanders of the allied armies who, under 
the Duke of Marlborough, gained those splendid victories that 
rendered her reign one of the most glorious in the annals of this 
country." 

George I. had more regard for his grandson than for his son ; 
and he made Frederick (subsequently father of George III.) a 
Companion of the Order, when he was not more than nine years 
of age. He raised to the same honor his own brother, Prince 
Ernest Augustus, and invested both knights at a Chapter held in 
Hanover in 1711. With this family exception, the Order of the 
Garter was not conferred upon any foreign prince in the reign of 
George I. 

George H. gave the Garter to that deformed Prince of Orange 
who married his excitable daughter Anne. The same honor was 
conferred on Prince Frederick of Hesse Cassel, who espoused 
George's amiable daughter Mary; Prince Frederick of Saxe 
Gotha, the Duke of Saxe Weisenfels, the Margrave of Anspach, 
the fatherless son of the Prince of Orange last named, and, wor- 
thiest of all, that Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick who won the 
honor by gaming the battle of Minden. He was invested with 
cap, habit, and decorations, in front of his tent and in the face of 
his whole army. His gallant enemy, De Broglie, to do honor to 



FOREIGN KNIGHTS OF THE GARTER. 179 

the new knight, proclaimed a suspension of arms for the day, drew 
up his own troops where they could witness the spectacle of cour- 
age and skill receiving their reward, and with his principal officers 
dining with the Prince in the evening. " Each party," says Miss 
Banks, " returned at night to his army, in order to recommence 
the hostilities they were engaged in, by order of their respective 
nations, against each other, on the next rising of the sun." I do 
not know what this anecdote most proves — the cruel absurdity 
of war, or the true chivalry of warriors. 

The era of George III. was indeed that in which foreign princes, 
sovereign and something less than that, abounded in the order. 
The first who received the Garter was the brother of Queen 
Charlotte, the reigning Duke of Mecklenburg Strelitz. Then 
came the Duke of Brunswick-TVolfenbiittel, who married Augusta, 
the sister of George III. Caroline of Brunswick was the issue 
of this marriage. Of the kings, roitelets, and petty princes of 
Germany who were added to the Garter, or rather, had the Gar- 
ter added to them, it is not worth while speaking ; but there is an 
incident connected with the foreign knights which does merit to be 
preserved. When Bonaparte founded the Legion of Honor, he 
prevailed on the King of Prussia (willing to take anything for 
his own, and reluctant to sacrifice anything for the public good) 
to accept the cross of the Legion for himself, and several others 
assigned to him for distribution. The king rendered himself justly 
abhorred for this disgraceful act; but he found small German 
princes quite as eager as he was to wear the badge of the then 
enemy of Europe. A noble exception presented itself in the 
person of the Duke of Brunswick, a Knight of the Garter, to 
whom the wretched king sent the insignia of the French order in 
1805. The duke, in a letter to the king, refused to accept such 
honor, " because, in his quality of Knight of the most noble Order 
of the Garter, he was prevented from receiving any badge of 
chivalry instituted by a person at war with the sovereign of that 
order." The Prussian king found an easier conscience in the 
Prince of Hesse Cassel, who was also a Knight of the Garter. 
This individual, mean and double-faced as the king, wore the cross 
of the Legion of Honor with the Garter. At that troubled pe- 
riod, it was exactly as if some nervous lairds, in the days of High- 



180 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

land feuds, had worn, at the same time, the plaids of the Mac- 
donalds and Campbells, in order to save their skins and estates by 
thus pretending to be members of two hostile parties. 

Under the Regency of George IV., the foreign sovereign princes 
were admitted into the order without any regard whatever to the 
regulations by statute. Within one year, or very little more than 
that period, two emperors, three kings, and an heir to a throne, 
who soon after came to his inheritance, were enrolled Companions 
of the order. But it was the era of victories and rejoicings, and 
no one thought of objecting to a prodigality which would have as- 
tounded the royal founder. Long after the period of victory, how- 
ever, the same liberality continued to be evinced toward foreign 
princes of sovereign degree. Thus at the accession of Charles 
X., the England monarch despatched the Duke of Northumber- 
land as Embassador Extraordinary to attend at the coronation of 
the French monarch, and to invest him, subsequently, with the 
Order of the Garter. I remember seeing the English procession 
pass from the duke's residence in the Rue du Bac, over the Pont 
E-oyal to the Tuileries. It puzzled the French people extremely. 
It took place on Tuesday, June 7, 1825. At noon, "four of the 
royal carriages," says the Galignani of the period, "drawn by 
eight horses, in which were the Baron de Lalrvre and M. de Viv- 
iers, were sent to the Hotel Galifet for the Duke of Northumber- 
land." The two envoys who thus contrived to ride in four car- 
riages and eight horses — a more wonderful feat than was ever 
accomplished by Mr. Ducrow — having reached the ducal hotel, 
were received by the duke, Lord Granville, our ordinary embas- 
sador, and Sir George Naylor, his Britannic Majesty's Commis- 
sioners charged to invest the King of France with the insignia of 
the Garter. The procession then set out ; and, as I have said, it 
perplexed the French spectators extremely. They could not 
imagine that so much ceremony was necessary in order to put a 
garter round a leg, and hang a collar from a royal neck. Besides 
the four French carriages-and-eight, there were three of the 
duke's carriages drawn by six horses ; one carriage of similar 
state, and two others more modestly drawn by pairs, belonging to 
Lord Granville. The carriage of " Garter" himself, behind a 
couple of ordinary steeds ; and eight other carriages, containing 



FOREIGN KNIGHTS OF THE GARTER. 181 

the suites of the embassadors, or privileged persons who passed 
for such in order to share in the spectacle, closed the procession. 
The duke had a very noble gathering around him, namely, the 
Hon. Algernon Percy, his secretary, the Marquis of Caermarthen, 
the Earl of Hopetoun, Lords Prudhoe (the present duke), Strat- 
haven, Pelham, and Hervey, the Hon. Charles Percy, and the 
goodhumored-looking Archdeacon Singleton. Such was the en- 
tourage of the embassador extraordinary. The ordinary embas- 
sador, Lord Granville, was somewhat less nobly surrounded. He 
had with him the Hon. Mr. Bligh, and Messrs. Mandeville, Gore, 
Abercrombie, and Jones. Sir George Naylor, in his Tabard, was 
accompanied by a cloud of heralds, some of whom have since be- 
come kings-of-arms — namely, Messrs. Woods, Young, and Wol- 
laston, and his secretary, Mr. Howard. More noticeable men 
followed in the train. There were Earl Gower and Lord Burg- 
hersh, the " Honorables" Mr. Townshend, Howard, and Clive, 
Captain Buller, and two men more remarkable than all the rest — 
the two embassadors included — namely, Sir John Malcolm and 
Sir Sidney Smith. Between admiring spectators, who were pro- 
foundly amazed at the sight of the duke in his robes, the procession 
arrived at the palace, where, after a pause and a reorganizing in 
the Hall of Embassadors, the party proceeded in great state into 
the Gallery of Diana. Here a throne had been especially erected 
for the investiture, and the show was undoubtedly most splendid. 
Charles X. looked in possession of admirable health and spirits — 
of everything, indeed, but bright intellect. He was magnificently 
surrounded. The duke wore with his robes that famous diamond- 
hilted sword which had been presented to him by George IV., and 
which cost, I forget how many thousand ponnds. His heron's 
plume alone was said to be worth five hundred guineas. His 
superb mantle of blue velvet, embroidered with gold, was support- 
ed by his youthful nephew, George Murray (the present Duke of 
Athol), dressed in a Hussar uniform, and the Hon. James Drum- 
mond, in a Highland suit. Seven gentlemen had the responsible 
mission of carrying the insignia on cushions, and Sir George pre- 
ceded them, bearing a truncheon, as " Garter Principal King-at- 
arms." The duke recited an appropriate address, giving a concise 
history of the order, and congratulating himself on having been 



182 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

employed on the present honorable mission. The investiture took 
place with the usual ceremonies ; but I remember that there was 
no salute of artillery, as was enjoined in the book of instructions 
drawn up by Garter. The latter official performed his office most 
gracefully, and attached to the person of the King of France, that 
day, pearls worth a million of francs. The royal knight made a 
very pleasant speech when all was concluded, and the usual hos- 
pitality followed the magnificent labors of an hour and a half's 
continuance. 

On the following evening, the Duke gave a splendid fete at his 
hotel, in honor of the coronation of Charles X., and of his admission 
into the Order of the Garter. The King and Queen of Wurtem- 
burg were present, with some fifteen hundred persons of less rank, 
but many of- whom were of greater importance in society. Per- 
haps not the least remarkable feature of the evening was the pres- 
ence together, in one group, of the Dauphin and that Duchess of 
Angouleme who was popularly known as the " orphan girl of the 
Temple," with the Duchess of Berri, the Duke of Orleans (Louis 
Philippe), and Talleyrand. The last-named still wore the long 
bolster-cravat, of the time of the Revolution, and looked as cunning 
as though he knew the destiny that awaited the entire group, three 
of whom have since died in exile — he alone breathing his last 
sigh, in calm tranquillity, in his own land. 

Charles X. conferred on the ducal bearer of the insignia of the 
Garter a splendid gift — one of the finest and most costly vases 
ever produced at the royal manufacture of Porcelain at Sevres. 
The painting on it, representing the Tribunal of Diana, is the 
work of M. Leguai, and it occupied that distinguished artist full 
three years before it was completed. Considering its vast dimen- 
sions, the nature of the painting, and its having passed twice 
through the fire without the slightest alteration, it is unique of its 
kind. This colossal vase now stands in the centre of the ball-room 
in Northumberland House. 

The last monarch to whom a commission has carried the insignia 
of the Garter, was the Czar Nicholas. It was characteristic of the 
man that, courteous as he was to the commissioners, he would not, 
as was customary in such cases, dine with them. They were en- 
tertained, however, according to his orders, by other members of 



FOREIGN KNIGHTS OF THE GARTER. 183 

his family. It is since the reign of George III. that Mr. Macau- 
lay's remark touching the fact of the Garter being rarely conferred 
on aliens, except sovereign princes, may be said to be well-founded. 
No alien, under princely rank, now wears the Garter. The most 
illustrious of the foreign knights are the two who were last created 
by patent, namely, the Emperor Louis Napoleon and the King of 
Sardinia. The King of Prussia is also a knight of the order, and, 
as such, he is bound by his oath never to act against the sovereign 
of that order ; but in our struggle with felonious Russia, the Prus- 
sian government, affecting to be neutral, imprisons an English 
consul on pretence that the latter has sought to enlist natives of 
Prussia into the English service, while, on the other hand, it passes 
over to Russia the material for making war, and sanctions the 
raising of a Russian loan in Berlin, to be devoted, as far as possi- 
ble, to the injury of England. The King is but a poor knight ! — 
and, by the way, that reminds me that the once so-called poor 
knights of Windsor can not be more appropriately introduced than 
here. 



184 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 



THE POOR KNIGHTS OF WINDSOR, 

AND THEIR DOINGS. 

The founder of the Order of the Garter did well when he 
thought of the " Milites pauperes," and having created a fraternity 
for wealthy and noble cavaliers, created one also for the same 
number of " poor knights, infirm of body, indigent and decayed," 
who should be maintained for the honor of God and St. George, 
continually serve God in their devotions, and have no further 
heavy duty, after the days of bustle and battle, than to pray for 
the prosperity of all living knights of the Garter, and for the re- 
pose of the souls of all those who were dead. It was resolved that 
none but really poor knights should belong to the fraternity, 
whether named, as was their privilege, by a companion of the 
noble order, or by the sovereign, as came at last to be exclusively 
the case. If a poor knight had the misfortune to become the pos- 
sessor of property of any sort realizing twenty pounds per annum, 
he became at once disqualified for companionship. Even in very 
early times, his position, with house, board, and various aids, spir- 
itual and bodily, was worth more than this. 

To be an alms knight, as Ashmole calls each member, implied 
no degradation whatever; quite the contrary. Each poor but 
worthy gentleman was placed on a level with the residentiary 
canons of Windsor, Like these, they received twelvepence each, 
every day that they attended service in the chapel, or abode in the 
College, with a honorarium of forty shillings annually for small 
necessaries. Their daily presence at chapel was compulsory, ex- 
cept good and lawful reason could be shown for the contrary. The 
old knights were not only required to be at service, but at high 
mass, the masses of the Virgin Mary, as also at Vespers and 
Complins- — from the beginning to the end. They earned their 



THE POOR KNIGHTS OF WINDSOR. 18D 

twelvepence honestly, but nevertheless the ecclesiastical corpora- 
tion charged with the payment, often did what such corporations, 
of course, have never tried to do since the Reformation — namely, 
cheat those who ought to have been recipients of their due. Dire 
were the discussions between the poor (and pertinacious) knights, 
and the dean, canons, and treasurers of the College. It required 
a mitred Archbishop of York and Lord Chancellor of England to 
settle the dispute, and a very high opinion does it afford us of the 
good practical sense of Church and Chancery in the days of Henry 
VI., when we find that the eminent individual with the double office 
not only came to a happy conclusion rapidly, and ordered all ar- 
rears to be paid to the poor knights, but decreed that the income 
of the treasurer should be altogether stopped, until full satisfaction 
was rendered to the "milites pauper." For the sake of such 
Chancery practice one would almost consent to take the Church 
with it. 

But not only did the lesser officials of that Church cheat the 
veteran knights of their pay, but their itching palm inflicted other 
wrong. It was the fitting custom to divide the fines, levied upon 
absentees from public worship, among the more habitually devout 
brethren. Gradually, however, the dean and canons appropriated 
these moneys to themselves, so that the less godly the knights 
were, the richer were the dean and canons. Further, many dy- 
ing noblemen had bequeathed very valuable legacies to the Col- 
lege and poor fraternity of veterans. These the business-like 
ecclesiastics had devoted to their own entire profit ; and it required 
stringent command from king and bishop, in the reign of Richard 
II., before they would admit the military legatees even to a share 
in the bequest. 

Not, indeed, that the stout old veterans were always blameless. 
Good living and few cares made " fast men " of some of them. 
There were especially two in the reign last named, who created 
very considerable scandal. These were a certain Sir Thomas 
Tawne and Sir John Breton. They were married men, but the 
foolish old fellows performed homage to vessels of iniquity, placed 
by them on the domestic altar. In other words, they were by far 
too civil to a couple of hussies with red faces and short kirtles, 
and that — not that such circumstance rendered the matter worse — 



186 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

before the eyes of their faithful and legitimate wives. The bishop 
was horror-stricken, no doubt, and the exemplary ecclesiastics of 
the College were enjoined to remonstrate, reprove, and, if amend- 
ment did not follow, to expel the offenders. 

Sir Thomas, I presume, heeded the remonstrance and submitted 
to live more decorously, for nothing more is said of him. Jolly 
Sir John was more difficult to deal with. He too may have dis- 
missed Cicely and made his peace with poor Lady Breton, but 
the rollicking old knight kept the College in an uproar, neverthe- 
less. He resumed attendance at chapel, indeed, but he did this 
after a fashion of Jiis own. He would walk slowly in the pro- 
cession of red-mantled brethren on their way to service, so as to 
obstruct those who were in the rear, or he would walk in a ridicu- 
lous manner, so as to rouse unseemly laughter. I am afraid that 
old Sir John was a very sad dog, and, however the other old 
gentleman may have behaved, he was really a godless fellow. 
Witness the fact that, on getting into chapel, when he retired to 
pray, he forthwith fell asleep, and could, or would, hardly keep his 
eyes open, even at the sacrament at the altar. 

After all, there was a gayer old fellow than Sir John Breton 
among the poor knights. One Sir Emanuel Cloue is spoken of 
who appears to have been a very Don Giovanni among the silly 
maids and merry wives of Windsor. He was for ever with his 
eye on a petticoat and his hand on a tankard ; and what with love 
and spiced canary, he could never sit still at mass, but was ad- 
dicted to running about among the congregation. It would puz- 
zle St. George himself to tell all the nonsense he talked on these 
occasions. 

When we read how the bishop suggested that the King and 
' Council should discover a remedy to check the rollicking career 
of Sir Edmund, we are at first perplexed to make out why the 
cure was not assigned to the religious officials. The fact, how- 
ever, is that they were as bad as, or worse than, the knights. 
They too were as often to be detected with their lips on the brim 
of a goblet, or on the cheek of a damsel. There was Canon 
Lorying. He was addicted to hawking, hunting, and jollification ; 
and the threat of dismissal, without chance of reinstalment, was 
had recourse to, before the canon ceased to make breaches in de- 



THE POOR KNIGHTS OF WINDSOR. 187 

corum. The vicars were as bad as the canons. The qualifica- 
tions ascribed to them of being " inflated and wanton," suffi- 
ciently describe by what sins these very reverend gentlemen were 
beset. They showed no reverence for the frolicsome canons, as 
might have been expected; and if both parties united in ex- 
hibiting as little veneration for the dean, the reason, doubtless, lay 
in the circumstance that the dean, as the bishop remarked, was 
remiss, simple, and negligent, himself. He was worse than this. 
He not only allowed the documents connected with the Order to 
go to decay, or be lost, but he would not pay the vicars their sala- 
ries till he was compelled to do so by high authority. The dean, 
in short, was a sorry knave ; he even embezzled the fees paid 
when a vicar occupied a new stall, and which were intended to be 
appropriated to the general profit of the chapter, and pocketed the 
entire proceeds for his own personal profit and enjoyment. The 
canons again made short work of prayers and masses, devoting 
only an hour each day for the whole. This arrangement may not 
have displeased the more devout among the knights ; and the 
canons defied the bishop to point out anything in the statutes by 
which they were prevented from effecting this abbreviation of their 
service, and earning their shilling easily. Of this ecclesiastical 
irregularity the bishop, curiously enough, solicited the state to 
pronounce its condemnation ; and an order from King and Council 
was deemed a good remedy for priests of loose thoughts and prac- 
tices. A matter of more moment was submitted to the jurisdic- 
tion of meaner authority. Thus, when one of the vicars, John 
Chichester, was " scandalized respecting the wife of Thomas 
Swift" (which is a very pretty way of putting his offence), the 
matter was left to the correction of the dean, who was himself 
censurable, if not under censure — for remissness, negligence, 
stupidity, and fraud. The dean's frauds were carried on to that 
extent that a legacy of £200 made to the brotherhood of poor 
knights, having come to the decanal hands, and the dean not 
having accounted for the same, compulsion was put on him to ren- 
der such account ; and that appears to be all the penalty he ever 
paid for his knavery. Where the priests were of such kidney, 
we need not wonder that the knights observed in the dirty and 



188 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

much-encumbered cloisters, the licentiousness which was once com- 
mon to men in the camp. 

Churchmen and knights went on in their old courses, notwith- 
standing the interference of inquisitors. Alterations were made 
in the statutes, to meet the evil ; some knights solicited incorpora- 
tion among themselves, separate from the Church authorities ; but 
this and other remedies were vainly applied. 

In the reign of Henry VIII. the resident knights were not all 
military men. Some of them were eminent persons, who, it is 
thought, withdrew from the world and joined the brotherhood, out 
of devotion. Thus there was Sir Robert Champlayne, who had 
been a right lusty knight, indeed, and who proved himself so again, 
after he returned once more to active life. Among the laymen, 
admitted to be poor knights, were Hulme, formerly Clarencieux 
King-at-arms ; Carly, the King's physician : Mewtes, the King's 
secretary for the French language ; and Westley, who was made 
second baron of the Exchequer in 1509. 

The order appears to have fallen into hopeless confusion, but 
Henry VIH., who performed many good acts, notwithstanding his 
evil deeds and propensities, bequeathed lands, the profits whereof 
(£600) were to be employed in the maintenance of "Thirteen 
Poor Knights." Each was to have a shilling a day, and their 
governor, three pounds, six and eightpence, additional yearly. 
Houses were built for these knights on the south side of the lower 
ward of the castle, where they are still situated, at a cost of nearly 
£3000. A white cloth-gown and a red cloth-mantle, appropriately 
decorated, were also assigned to each knight. King James doubled 
the pecuniary allowance, and made it payable in the Exchequer, 
quarterly. 

Charles I. intended to increase the number of knights to their 
original complement. He did not proceed beyond the intention. 
Two of his subjects, however, themselves knights, Sir Peter La 
Maire and Sir Francis Crane, left lands which supplied funds for 
the support of five additional knights. 

Cromwell took especial care that no knight should reside at 
Windsor, who was hostile to his government ; and he was as care- 
ful that no preacher should hold forth there, who was not more 
friendly to the commonwealth than to monarchy. 



THE POOR KNIGHTS OF WINDSOR. 189 

At this period, and for a hundred years before this, there was 
not a man of real knight's degree belonging to the order, nor has 
there since been down to the present time. In 1724 the benevo- 
lent Mr. Travers bequeathed property to be applied to the main- 
tenance of Seven Naval Knights. It is scarcely credible, but it is 
the fact, that seventy years elapsed before our law, which then 
hung a poor wretch for robbing to the amount of forty shillings, let 
loose the funds to be appropriated according to the will of the testa- 
tor, and under sanction of the sovereign. What counsellors and 
attorneys fattened upon the costs, meantime, it is not now of im- 
portance to inquire. In 1796, thirteen superannuated or disabled 
lieutenants of men-of-war, officers of that rank being alone eligible 
under Mr. Travers's will, were duly provided for. The naval 
knights, all unmarried, have residences and sixty pounds per annum 
each, in addition to their half-pay. The sum of ten shillings, 
weekly, is deducted from the " several allowances, to keep a con- 
stant table." 

The Military and Naval Knights — for the term "Poor" was 
dropped, by order of William IV. — no longer wear the mantle, as 
in former times ; but costumes significant of their profession and. 
their rank therein. There are twenty-five of them, one less than 
their original number, and they live in harmony with each other 
and the Church. The ecclesiastical corporation has nothing to do 
with their funds, and these unmarried naval knights do not disturb 
the slumbers of a single Mr. Brook within the liberty of Windsor. 

In concluding this division, let me add a word touching the 

KNIGHTS OF THE BATH. 

There was no more gallant cavalier in his day than Geoffrey, 
Earl of Anjou. He was as meek as he was gallant. In testimony 
of his humility he assumed a sprig of the broom plant (planta 
genista) for his device, and thereby he gave the name of Plantage- 
net to the long and illustrious line. 

If his bravery raised him in the esteem of women, his softness 
of spirit earned for him some ridicule. Matilda, the " imperially 
perverse," laughed outright when her sire proposed she should ac- 
cept the hand of Geoffrey of Anjou. " He is so like a girl," said 



190 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

Matilda. " There is not a more lion-hearted knight in all Chris- 
tendom," replied the king. " There is none certainly so sheep- 
faced," retorted the arrogant heiress ; she then reluctlantly con- 
sented to descend to be mate of the wearer of the broom. 

Matilda threw as many obstacles as she could in the way of the 
completion of the nuptial ceremony. At last this solemn matter 
was definitively settled to come off at Rouen, on the 26th of August, 
1127. Geoffrey must have been a knight before his marriage 
with Matilda. However this may be, he is said to have been cre- 
ated an English knight in honor of the occasion. To show how 
he esteemed the double dignity of knight and husband, he prepared 
himself for both, by first taking a bath, and afterward putting on a 
clean linen shirt. Chroniclers assure us that this is the first in- 
stance, since the Normans came into England, in which bathing is 
mentioned in connection with knighthood. Over his linen shirt 
Geoffrey wore a gold-embroidered garment, and above all a purple 
mantle. We are told too that he wore silk stockings, an article 
which is supposed to have been unknown in England until a much 
later period. His feet were thrust into a gay pair of slippers, on 
the outside of each of which was worked a golden Hon. In this 
guise he was wedded to Matilda, and never had household lord a 
greater virago for a lady. 

From this circumstance the Knights of the Bath are said to have 
had their origin. For a considerable period, this order of chivalry 
ranked as the highest military order in Europe. All the members 
were companions. There was but one chief, and no knight ranked 
higher, nor lower, than any other brother of the society. The 
order, nevertheless, gradually became obsolete. Vacancies had 
not been filled up ; that Garter had superseded the Bath, and it 
was not till the reign of George H. that the almost extinct frater- 
nity was renewed. 

Its revival took place for political reasons, and these are well 
detailed by Horace Walpole, in his " Reminiscences of the Courts 
of George the First and Second." " It was the measure," he says, 
" of Sir Robert Walpole, and was an artful bunch of thirty-six rib- 
ands, to supply a fund of favors, in lieu of places. He meant, too, 
to stave off the demand for garters, and intended that the red 
should have been a stage to the blue ; and accordingly took one 



THE POOR KNIGHTS OF WINDSOR. 191 

of the former himself. He offered the new order to old Sarah, 
Duchess of Marlborough, for her grandson the Duke, and for the 
Duke of Bedford, who had married one of her granddaughters. 
She haughtily replied, that they should take nothing but the Gar- 
ter. ' Madam,' said Sir Robert, coolly, ' they who take the Bath 
will the sooner have the Garter.' The next year he took the latter 
himself, with the Duke of Richmond, both having been previously 
installed knights of the revived institution." 

Sir Robert respected the forms and laws of the old institution, 
and these continued to be observed down to the period following 
the battle of Waterloo. Instead of their creating a new order for 
the purpose of rewarding the claimants for distinction, it was re- 
solved to enlarge that of the Bath, which was, therefore, divided 
into three classes. 

First, there was the Grand Cross of the Bath (G. C. B.), the 
reward of military and diplomatic services. 

The second class, of Knights Commanders (C. B.), was open to 
those meritorious persons who had the good luck to hold commis- 
sions not below the rank of Lieutenant- Colonel or Post-Captain. 
The members of this class rank above the ordinary knights- 
bachelors. 

The third class, of Knights Companions, was instituted for offi- 
cers holding inferior commissions to those named above, and whose 
services in their country's cause rendered them eligible for admis- 
sion. 

These arrangements have been somewhat modified subsequently, 
and not without reason. Henry Vllth's Chapel in Westminster 
Abbey is the locality in which the installation of the different 
knights takes place. The statutes of the order authorize the deg- 
radation of a knight " convicted of heresy against the Articles of 
the Christian religion ;" or who has been " attainted of high trea- 
son," or of " cowardly flying from some field of battle." It is 
rather curious that felony is not made a ground of degradation. 
The Duke of Ormond was the last Knight of the Garter who was 
degraded, for treason against George I. Addison, after the degra- 
dation, invariably speaks of him as " the late Duke." A more 
grievous offender than he was that Earl of Somerset, who had 
been a reckless page, and who was an unworthy Knight of the 



192 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

Garter, under James I. He was convicted of murder, but he was 
not executed, and to the day of his death he continued to wear the 
Gaiter, of which he had been pronounced unworthy. The last 
instances of degradation from the Order of the Bath were those of 
Lord Cochrane (in 1814), for an alleged misdemeanor, and Sir 
Eyre Coote, two years subsequently. In these cases the popular 
judgment did not sanction the harsh measures adopted by those in 
authority.* 

In olden times, the new Knights of the Bath made as gallant 
display in public as the Knights of the Garter. In reference to 
this matter, Mr. Mackenzie Walcott, in Ins " Westminster," cites 
a passage from an author whom he does not name. The reverend 
gentleman says: "On Sunday, July 24th, 1603, was performed 
the solemnity of Knights of the Bath riding honorably from St. 
James's to the Court, and made show with their squires and pages 
about the Tilt-yard, and after went into the park of St. James, and 
there lighted from their horses and went up into the King's Majes- 
ty's presence, in the gallery, where they received the order of 
Knighthood of the Bath." 

The present " Horse- Guards" occupies a portion of the old Tilt- 
yard ; but for the knightly doings there, and also in Smithfield, I 
must refer all curious readers to Mr. Charles Knight's " Pictorial 
History of London." 

The Order of the Thistle, if Scottish antiquaries may be 
credited, is almost as ancient as the times hi which the first thistle 
was nibbled at by the primitive wild-ass. Very little, however, is 
known upon the subject, and that little is not worth repeating. 
The earliest certain knowledge dates from Robert H., whose coins 
bore the impress of St. Andrew and his cross. James IH. is the 
first monarch who is known to have worn the thistle, as his badge. 
There is no evidence of these emblems being connected with 
knighthood until the reign of James V. The Reformers, subse- 
quently, suppressed the chivalric order, as popish, and it was not 
till the reign of James n. of England that the thistle and chivalry 
again bloomed together. The order is accessible only to peers. 

# Subsequently, the Prince Kegent ordered the name of Captain Hanchett 
to be erased from the roll of the Bath, he having been struck off the list of 
Captains in the Royal Navy. 



THE POOR KNIGHTS OP WINDSOR. 193 

A commoner may have conferred more honor and service on his 
country than all the Scottish peers put together, but no amount 
of merit could procure him admission into the Order of the 
Thistle. Nevertheless three commoners did once belong to it ; 
but their peculiar merit was that they were heirs presumptive to 
dukedoms. 

Ireland was left without an order until the year 1783, when 
George III. good-naturedly established that of St. Patrick, to the 
great delight of many who desired to be knights, and to the in- 
finite disgust of all who were disappointed. Except in name and 
local circumstances there is nothing that distinguishes it from other 
orders. 

I must not conclude this section without remarking, that shortly 
after the sovereignty of Malta and the Ionian Isles was ceded to 
Great Britain, the Order of St. Michael was instituted in 1818, 
for the Purpose of having what Walpole calls " a fund of ribands," 
to reward those native gentlemen who had deserved or desired 
favors, if not places. 

The Order of the Guelphs was founded by the Prince Regent 
in 1815. George III. had designed such an order for the most 
distinguished of his Hanoverian subjects. Down to the period of 
the accession of Queen Victoria, however, the order was conferred 
on a greater number of Englishmen than of natives of Hanover. 
Since the latter Kingdom has passed under the rule of the male 
heir of the line of Brunswick, the order of Guelph has become a 
foreign order. Licenses to accept this or any other foreign order 
does not authorize the assumption of any style, appellation, rank, 
precedence, or privilege appertaining unto a knight-bachelor of 
these realms. Such is the law as laid down by a decision of Lord 
Ellenborough, and which does not agree with the judgment of 
Coke. 

The history of foreign orders would occupy too much of my 
space ; but there is something so amusing in the history of an order 
of knights called k ' Knights of the Holy Ampoule," that a few 
words on the subject may not be unacceptable to such readers as 
are unacquainted with the ephemeral cavaliers in question, 

13 



194 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 



THE KNIGHTS OF THE " SAINTE AMPOULE." 

" Mais ce sont des chevaliers pour rire." — he Sage. 

There have been knights who, like " special constables/' have 
been created merely "for the nonce;" and who have been as 
ephemeral as the shortlived flies so called. This was especially 
the case with the Knights of the Holy "Ampoule," or anointing 
oil, used at the coronation of the kings of France. 

This oil was said to have been brought to St. Remy (Remigius) 
by a dove, from Heaven, and to have been placed by the great 
converter of Clovis, in his own tomb, where it was found, by a 
miraculous process. St. Remy himself never alluded either to 
the oil or the story connected with it. Four centuries after the 
saint's death the matter was first spoken — nay, the oil was boldly 
distilled, by Hinckmar, Archbishop of Rheims. This archi-epis- 
copal biographer of St. Remy has inserted wonders in the saint's 
life, which staggered, while they amused, the readers who were able 
to peruse his work by fireside, in castle-hall, or convert refectory. 
I can only allude to one of these wonders — namely, the " Sainte 
Ampoule." Hinckmar actually asserted that when St. Remy was 
about to consecrate with oil, the humble King Clovis, at his corona- 
tion, a dove descended from Heaven, and placed in his hands a 
small vial of holy oil. Hinckmar defied any man to prove the 
contrary. As he further declared that the vial of oil was still to 
be found in the saint's sepulchre, and as it was so found, accord- 
ingly, Hinckmar was allowed to have proved his case. Thence- 
forward, the chevaliers of the St. Ampoule were created, for a 
day — that of the crowning of the sovereign. They had charge 
of the vial, delivered it to the archbishop, and saw it restored to 
its repository ; and therewith, the coronation and their knightly 



THE KNIGHTS OF THE « SAINTE AMPOULE." 195 

character concluded together. From that time, down to the period 
of Louis XVI., the knights and the vial formed the most distin- 
guished portion of the coronation procession and doings at the 
crowning of the kings of France. 

Then ensued the Revolution ; and as that mighty engine never 
touched anything without smashing it, you may be sure that the 
vial of St. Remy hardly escaped destruction. 

On the 6th of October, 1793, Citizen Rhull entered the modest 
apartment of Philippe Hourelle, chief marguiUier of the Cathedral 
of Rheims, and without ceremony demanded that surrender should 
be made to him of the old glass-bottle of the ci-devant Remy. Phil- 
ippe's wig raised itself with horror ; but as Citizen Rhull told him 
that it would be as easy to lift his head from his shoulders as his 
wig from his head, if he did not obey, the marguiUier stammered 
crut an assertion that the reliquary was in the keeping of the cure, 
M. Seraine, to whom he would make instant application. 

" Bring pomatum and all," said Citizen Rhull, who thus pro- 
fanely misnamed the sacred balm or thickened oil, which had 
anointed the head and loins of so many kings from Charles the 
Bald, downward. 

" May I ask," said Philippe, timidly, " what you will do there- 
with?" 

" Grease your neck, that the knife may slip the easier through 
it, unless you bring it within a decade of minutes." 

" Too much honor by half," exclaimed Philippe. " I will slip 
to the cure as rapidly as if I slid the whole way on the precious 
ointment itself. Meanwhile, here is a bottle of Burgundy — " 

" Which I shall have finished within the time specified. So, 
despatch ; and let us have t'other bottle, too !" 

When Philippe Hourelle had communicated the request to the 
cure, Monsieur Seraine, with a quickness of thought that did jus- 
tice to his imagination, exclaimed, " We will take the rogues in, 
and give them a false article for the real one." But the time was 
so short ; there was no second ancient-looking vial at hand ; there 
was not a pinch of pomatum, nor a spoonful of oil in the house, 
and the cure confessed, with a sigh, that the genuine relic must 
needs be surrendered. " But we can save some of it ! " cried M. 
Seraine ; " here is the vial, give me the consecrating spoon." 



196 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

And with the handle of the spoon, having extracted some small 
portions, which the cure subsequently wrapped up carefully, and 
rather illegibly labelled, the vial was delivered to Philippe, who 
surrendered it to Citizen Ehull, who carried the same to the front 
of the finest cathedral in France, and at the foot of the statue of 
Louis XV. Citizen Ehull solemnly hammered the vial into powder, 
and, in the name of the Republic, trod the precious ointment un- 
derfoot till it was not to be distinguished from the mud with which 
it was mingled. 

" And so do we put an end to princes and pomatum," cried he. 

Philippe coughed evasively ; smiled as if he was of the same 
way of thinking with the republican, and exclaimed, very mentally 
indeed, " Vivent les princes et la pommade." Neither, he felt as- 
sured, was irrevocably destroyed. 

The time, indeed, did come round again for princes, and Napo- 
leon was to be crowned at Notre Dame. lie cared little as to 
what had become' of the Heaven-descended ointment, and he 
might have anointed, as well as crowned, himself. There were 
some dozen gentlemen who hoped that excuse might be discovered 
for creating the usual order of the Knights of the Ampoule ; but 
the Emperor did not care a fig for knights or ointment, and, to 
the horror of all who hoped to be chevaliers, the imperial corona- 
tion was celebrated without either. But then Napoleon was dis- 
crowned, as was to be expected from such profanity ; and there- 
with returned the Bourbons, who, having forgotten nothing, 
bethought themselves of the Saint Ampoule. Monsieur de 
Chevrieres, magistrate at Kheims, set about the double work of 
discovery and recovery. For some time he was unsuccessful. 
At length, early in 1819, the three sons of the late Philippe 
Hourelle waited on him. They made oath that not only were 
they aware of a portion of the sacred ointment having been in the 
keeping of their late father, but that his widow succeeded the 
inheritance, and that she reckoned it as among her choicest 
treasures. 

" She has nothing to do but to make it over to me," said Mon- 
sieur Chevrieres; "she will be accounted of in history as the 
mother of the knights of the Ampoule of the Restoration." 

" It is vexatious," said the eldest son, " but the treasure has been 



THE KNIGHTS OF THE " SAINTE AMPOULE." 197 

lost. At the time of the invasion, our house was plundered, and 
the relic wat the first thing the enemy laid his hands on." 

The disappointment that ensued was only temporary. A judge 
named Lecomte soon appeared, who made oath that he had in his 
keeping a certain portion of what had at first been consigned to 
the widow Hourelle. The portion was so small that it required 
an eye of faith, very acute and ready indeed, to discern it. The 
authorities looked upon the relic, and thought if Louis XVIII. 
could not be crowned till a sufficient quantity of the holy ointment 
was recovered wherewith to anoint him, the coronation was not 
likely to be celebrated yet awhile. 

Then arose a crowd of priests, monks, and ex-monks, all of 
whom declared that the cure, M. Seraine, had imparted to them 
the secret of his having preserved a portion of the dried anointing 
oil, but they were unable to say where he had deposited it. Some 
months of hesitation ensued, when, in summer, M. Boure, a priest 
of Berry-au-Bac, came forward and proclaimed that he was the 
depositary of the long-lost relic, and that he had preserved it in a 
portion of the winding-sheet of St. Remy himself. A week later 
M. Champagne Provotian appeared, and made deposition to the 
following effect : He was standing near Rhull when the latter, in 
October, 1793, destroyed the vial which had been brought from 
Heaven by a dove, at the foot of the statue of Louis XV. When 
the republican struck the vial, some fragments of the glass flew 
on to the coat-sleeve of the said M. Champagne. These he dex- 
terously preserved, took home with him, and now produced in 
court. 

A commission examined the various relics, and the fragments 
of glass. The whole was pronounced genuine, and the chairman 
thought that by process of putting " that and that together," there 
was enough of legend, vial, and ointment to legitimately anoint 
and satisfy any Christian king. 

" There is nothing now to obstruct your majesty's coronation," 
said his varlet to him one morning, after having spent three hours 
in a service for which he hoped to be appointed one of the knights 
of the Sainte Ampoule ; " there is now absolutely nothing to pre- 
vent that august ceremony." 

" Allons done !" said Louis XVIII. with that laugh of incredu- 



198 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

lity, that shrug of the shoulders, and that good-humored impatience 
at legends and absurdities, which made the priests speak of him 
as an infidel. 

" What shall be done with the ointment ?" said the knight- 
expectant. 

" Lock it up in the vestry cupboard, and say no more about it." 
And this was done with some ceremony and a feeling of disap- 
pointment. The gathered relics, placed in a silver reliquary lined 
with white silk, and enclosed in a metal case under three locks, 
were deposited within the tomb of St. Remy. There it remained 
till Charles X. was solemnly crowned in 1825. In that year, pos- 
itively for the last time, the knights of the Sainte Ampoule were 
solemnly created, and did their office. As soon as Charles entered 
the choir, he knelt in the front of the altar. On rising, he was 
led into the centre of the sanctuary, where a throned chair received 
his august person. A splendid group half-encircled him; and 
then approached the knights of tho Sainte Ampoule in grand pro- 
cession, bearing all that was left of what the sacred dove did or 
did not bring to St. Remy, for the anointing of Clovis. Not less 
than three prelates, an archbishop and two bishops, received the 
ointment from the hands of the knights, and carried it to the high 
altar. Their excellencies and eminences may be said to have per- 
formed their office with unction, but the people laughed alike at 
the knights, the pomatum, and the ceremony, all of which combined 
could not endow Charles X. with sense enough to keep his place. 
The knights of the Sainte Ampoule may be said now to have lost 
their occupation for ever. 

Of all the memorabilia of Rheims, the good people there dwelt 
upon none more strongly than the old and splendid procession of 
these knights of the Sainte Ampoule. The coronation cortege 
seemed only a subordinate point of the proceedings ; and the mag- 
nificent canopy, upheld by the knights over the vial, on its way 
from the abbey of St. Remy to the cathedral, excited as much 
attention as the king's crown. 

The proceedings, however, were not always of a peaceable 
character. The Grand Prior of St. Remy was always the bearer 
of the vial, in its case or shrine. It hung from his neck by a 
golden chain, and he himself was mounted on a white horse. On 



THE KNIGHTS OF THE « SAINTE AMPOULE." 199 

placing the vial in the hands of the archbishop, the latter pledged 
himself by solemn oath to restore it at the conclusion of the cere* 
mony ; and some half-dozen barons were given as hostages by way 
of security. The procession back to the abbey, through the gayly 
tapestried streets, was of equal splendor with that to the cathedral. 

The horse on which the Grand Prior was mounted was fur- 
nished by the government, but the Prior claimed it as the property 
of the abbey as soon as he returned thither. This claim was dis- 
puted by the inhabitants of Chine la Populeux, or as it is vulgarly 
called, " Chene la Pouilleux." They founded their claim upon a 
privilege granted to their ancestors. It appeared that in the olden 
time, the English had taken Rheims, plundered the city, and rifled 
the tomb of St. Remy, from which they carried off the Sainte 
Ampoule. The inhabitants of Chene, however, had fallen upon 
the invaders and recovered the inestimable treasure. From that 
time, and in memory and acknowledgment of the deed, they had 
enjoyed, as they said, the right to walk in the procession with the 
knights of the Sainte. Ampoule, and had been permitted to claim 
the horse ridden by the Grand Prior. The Prior and his people 
called these claimants scurvy knaves, and would by no means 
attach any credit to the story. At the coronation of Louis XIII. 
they did not scruple to support their claim by violence. They 
pulled the Prior from his horse, terribly thrashed the monks who 
came to his assistance, tore the canopy to pieces, thwacked the 
knights right lustily, and carried off the steed in triumph. The 
respective parties immediately went to law, and spent the value of 
a dozen steeds, in disputes about the possession of a single horse. 
The contest was decided in favor of the religious community ; and 
the turbulent people of Chene were compelled to lead the quad- 
ruped back to the abbey stables. They renewed their old claim 
subsequently, and again threatened violence, much to the delight 
of the attorneys, who thought to make money by the dissension. 
At the coronations of Louis XV. and Louis XVI. these sover- 
eigns issued special decrees, whereby the people of Chene were 
prohibited from" pretending to any property in the horse, and from 
supporting any such pretensions by acts of violence. 

The history of foreign orders would require a volume as large 
as Anstis's ; but though I can not include such a history among 



200 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIK DAYS. 

my gossiping details, I may mention a few curious incidents con- 
nected with 

THE OKDER OF THE HOLY GHOST. 

There is a singular circumstance connected with this order. It 
was founded by the last of the Valois, and went out with the last 
of the Bourbons. Louis Philippe had a particular aversion for 
the orders which were most cherished by the dynasty he so clev- 
erly supplanted. The Citizen King may be said to have put down 
both " St. Louis" and the " Holy Ghost" cavaliers. He did not 
abolish the orders by decree ; but it was clearly understood that no 
one wearing the insignia would be welcome at the Tuileries. 

The Order of the Holy Ghost was instituted by Henri, out of 
gratitude for two events, for which no other individual had cause 
to be grateful. He was (when Duke of Anjou) elected King of 
Poland, on the day of Pentecost, 1573, and on the same day in 
the following year he succeeded to the crown of France. Hence 
the Order with its hundred members, and the king as grand 
master. 

St. Foix, in his voluminous history of the order, furnishes the 
villanous royal founder with a tolerably good character. This is 
more than any other historian has done ; and it is not very satis- 
factorily executed by this historian himself. He rests upon the 
principle that the character of a king, or his disposition rather, 
may be judged by his favorites. He then points to La Marck, 
Mangiron, Joyeuse, D'Epernon, and others. Their reputations are 
not of the best, rather of the very worst ; but then St. Foix says 
that they were all admirable swordsmen, and carried scars about 
them, in front, in proof of their valor : he evidently thinks that the 
bellica virtus is the same thing as the other virtues. 

On the original roll of knights there are names now more worthy 
of being remembered. Louis de Gonzague, Duke de Nevers, was 
one of these. On one occasion, he unhorsed the Huguenot Captain 
de Beaumont, who, as he lay on the ground, fired a pistol and 
broke the ducal kneepan. The Duke's squire berJt forward with 
his knife to despatch the Captain ; the Duke, however, told the 
latter to rise. " I wish," said he, " that you may have a tale to 
tell that is worth narrating. When you recount, at your fireside, 



THE KNIGHTS OF THE HOLY GHOST. 201 

how you wounded the Duke de Nevers, be kind enough to add that 
he gave you your life." The Duke was a noble fellow. Would 
that his generosity could have restored his kneepan ! but he limped 
to the end of his days. 

But there was a nobler than he, in the person of the Baron 
d'Assier, subsequently Count de Crussol and Duke d'Uzes. He 
was a Huguenot, and I confess that I can not account for the fact 
of his being, at any time of his life, a Knight of the Order of the 
Holy Ghost. Henri III. was not likely to have conferred the in- 
signia even on a pervert. His name, however, is on the roll. He 
was brave, merciful, pious, and scrupulously honest. When he 
captured Bergerai, he spared all who had no arms in their hands, 
and finding the women locked up in the churches, he induced them 
to return home, on promise of being protected from all molestation. 
These poor creatures must have been marvellously fair ; and the 
baron's eulogy on them reminds me of the expression of the soldiers 
when they led Judith through the camp of Holofernes : " Who 
could despise this people that have among them such women/' 

The baron was not a little proud of his feat, and he thought that 
if all the world talked of the continence of Scipio, he had a right 
to claim some praise as the protector of female virtue. Accord- 
ingly, in forwarding an account of the whole affair to the Due de 
Montpensier, he forwarded also a few samples of the ladies. " I 
have only chosen twenty of the handsomest of them," he writes, 
" whom I have sent you that you may judge if they were not very 
likely to tempt us to reprisals ; they will inform you that they have 
suffered not the least dishonor." By sending them to Mont- 
pensier's quarters the ladies were in great danger of incurring 
that from which the Baron had saved them. But he winds up 
with a small lecture. He writes to the Duke : " You are a 
devotee [ ! J ; you have a ghostly father ; your table is always 
filled with monks ; your hear two or three masses every day ; 
and you go frequently to confession. / oonfess myself only to 
God. I hear no masses. I have none but soldiers at my table. 
Honor is the sole director of my conscience. It will never advise 
me to order violence against woman, to put to death a defenceless 
enemy, or to break a promise once given." In this lecture, there 
was, in fact, a double-handed blow. Two birds were killed with 



202 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

one stone. The Baron censured, by implication, both the Duke 
and his religion. I was reminded of him by reading a review in 
the " Guardian," where the same skilful method is applied to criti- 
cism. The reviewer's subject was Canon Wordsworth's volume 
on Chevalier Bunsen's " Hippolytus." " The canon's book," said 
the reviewer (I am quoting from memory), "reminds us — and it 
must be a humiliation and degradation to an intelligent, educated, 
and thoughtful man — of one of Dr. Cumming's Exeter Hall lec- 
tures." Here the ultra high church critic stunned, with one blow, 
the merely high-church priest and the no-church presbyterian. 

There was generosity, at least, in another knight of this order, 
Francis Goaffier, Lord of Crevecoeur. Catherine of Medicis an- 
nounced to him the appointment of his son to the command of a 
regiment of foot. " Madame," said the Knight of the Holy Ghost, 
" my son was beset, a night or two ago, by live assassins ; a Cap- 
tain La Vergne drew in his defence, and slew two of the assailants. 
The rest fled, disabled. If your majesty will confer the regiment 
on one who deserves it, you will give it to La Vergne." — " Be it 
so," said Catherine, " and your son shall not be the less well pro- 
vided for." 

One, at least, of the original knights of this order was famous 
for his misfortunes ; this was Charles de Hallewin, Lord of Piennes. 
He had been in six-and-twenty sieges and battles, and never came 
out of one unscathed. His domestic wounds were greater still. 
He had five sons, and one daughter who was married. The whole 
of them, with his son-in-law, were assassinated, or died accidental- 
ly, by violent deaths. The old chevalier went down to his tomb 
heart-broken and heirless. 

Le Eoi, Lord of Chavigny, and who must not be mistaken for 
an ancestor of that Le Koi who died at the Alma under the title 
of Marshal St. Arnaud, is a good illustration of the blunt, honest 
knight. Charles IX. once remarked to him that his mother, Cath- 
erine de Medicis, boasted that there was not a man in France, 
with ten thousand livres a year, at whose hearth she had not a spy 
in her pay. " I do not know," said Le Roi, " whether tyrants 
make spies, or spies tyrants. For my own part, I see no use in 
them, except in war." 

For honesty of a still higher sort, commend me to Scipio de 



THE KNIGHTS OF THE HOLY GHOST. 203 

Fierques, Lord of Lavagne. Catherine de Medicis offered to make 
this, her distant relative, a marshal of France. " Good Heavens, 
Madame !" he exclaimed, " the world would laugh at both of us. 
I am simply a brave gentleman, and deserve that reputation ; but 
I should perhaps lose it, were you to make a marshal of me." The 
dignity is taken with less reluctance in our days. It was this hon- 
est knight who was asked to procure the appointment of queen's 
chaplain for a person who, by way of bribe, presented the gallant 
Scipio with two documents which would enable him to win a law- 
suit he was then cariying on against an obstinate adversary. 
Scipio perused the documents, saw that they proved his antagonist 
to be in the right, and immediately withdrew his opposition. He 
left the candidate for the queen's chaplaincy to accomplish the ob- 
ject he had in view, in the best way he might. 

There was wit, too, as might be expected, among these knights. 
John Blosset, Baron de Torci, affords us an illustration. He had 
been accused of holding correspondence with the enemy in Spain, 
and report said that he was unworthy of the Order of the Holy 
Ghost. He proved his innocence before a chapter of the order. 
At the end of the investigation, he wittily applied two passages 
from the prayer-book of the knights, by turning to the king, and 
saying, " Domine ne projicias me a facie tua, et spiritum sanctum 
tnum ne auferas a me." " Lord, cast me out from thy presence, 
and take not thy ' Holy Spirit' from me." And the king bade 
him keep it, while he laughed at the rather profane wit of John 
Blosset. 

There was wit, too, of a more practical nature, among these 
knights of the Holy Spirit. The royal founder used occasionally 
to retire with the knights to Vincennes. There they shut them- 
selves up, as they said, to fast and repent ; but, as the world said, 
to indulge in pleasures of a very monster-like quality. The royal 
dukes of a later period in France used to atone for inordinate vice 
by making their mistresses fast ; the royal duchesses settled their 
little balance with Heaven, by making their servants fast. It ap- 
pears that there was nothing of this vicarious penance in the case 
of Henri III. and his knights. Not that all the knights willingly 
submitted to penance which mortified their appetites. Charles de 
la Marck, Count of Braine, was one of those impatient penitents. 



204 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

On a day on which rigid abstinence had been enjoined, the king 
was passing by the count's apartment, when he was struck by a 
savory smell. King as he was, he immediately applied his eye to 
the keyhole of the count's door, and beheld the knight blowing 
lustily at a little fire under a chafing-dish, in which there were two 
superb soles frying in savory sauce. " Brother knight, brother 
knight," exclaimed Henri, " I see all and smell much. Art thou 
not ashamed thus to transgress the holy rule?" — "I should be 
much more so," said the count, opening the door, " if I made an 
enemy of my stomach. I can bear this sort of abstinence no long- 
er. Here am I, knight and gentleman, doubly famished in that 
double character, and I have been, in my own proper person, to 
buy these soles, and purchase what was necessary for the most de- 
licious of sauces : I am cooking them myself, and they are now 
done to a turn. Cooked aax gratins, your majesty yourself can 
not surely resist tasting. Allow me" — and he pushed forward a 
chair, in which Henri seated himself, and to the " soles aux 
gratins," such as Vefour and Very never dished up, the monarch 
sat down, and with the hungry count, discussed the merits of fast- 
ing, while they enjoyed the fish. It was but meagre fare after all; 
and probably the repast did not conclude there. 

Charity is illustrated in the valiant William Pot (a very ancient 
name of a very ancient family, of which the late archdeacon of 
Middlesex and vicar of Kensington was probably a descendant). 
He applied a legacy of sixty thousand livres to the support of 
wounded soldiers. Henri III., who was always intending to ac- 
complish some good deed, resolved to erect an asylum for infirm 
military men ; but, of course, he forgot it. Henri IV., who has 
received a great deal more praise than he deserves, also expressed 
his intention to do something for his old soldiers ; but he was too 
much taken up with the fair Gabrielle, and she was not like Nell 
Gwynne, who turned her intimacy with a king to the profit of the 
men who poured out their blood for him. The old soldiers were 
again neglected ; and it was not till the reign of Louis XIV. that 
Pot's example was again recalled to mind, and profitable action 
adopted in consequence. When I think of the gallant Pot's leg- 
acy, what he did therewith, and how French soldiers benefited 
thereby, I am inclined to believe that the German troops, less well • 



THE KNIGHTS OF THE HOLY GHOST. 205 

cared for, may thence have derived their once favorite oath, and 
that Potz tausend! may have some reference to the sixty thousand 
livres which the compassionate knight of Rhodes and the Holy 
Ghost devoted to the comfort and solace of the brave men who 
had been illustriously maimed in war. 

The kings of France were accustomed to create a batch of 
knights of the Holy Ghost, on the day following that of the coro- 
nation, when the monarchs became sovereign heads of the order. 
The entire body subsequently repaired from the Cathedral to the 
Church of St. Renii, in grand equestrian procession, known as the 
" cavalcade." Nothing could well exceed the splendor of this pro- 
cession, when kings were despotic in France, and funds easily 
provided. Cavalry and infantry in state uniforms, saucy pages in 
a nutter of feathers and ribands, and groups of gorgeous officials 
preceded the marshals of France, who were followed by the knights 
of the Holy Ghost, after whom rode their royal Grand Master, 
glittering like an Eastern king, and nodding, as he rode, like a 
Mandarin. 

The king and the knights performed their devotions before the 
shrine of Saint Marcoul, which was brought expressly from the 
church of Corbeni, six leagues distance from Rheims. This par- 
ticular ceremony was in honor of the celebrated old abbot of Nan- 
tua, who, in his lifetime, had been eminently famous for his success 
in curing the scrofulous disorder called " the king's evil." After 
this devotional service, the sovereign master of the order of the 
Holy Ghost was deemed qualified to cure the evil himself. Ac- 
cordingly, decked with the mantle and collar of the order, and 
half encircled by the knights, he repaired to the Abbey Park to 
touch and cure those who were afflicted with the disease in ques- 
tion. It was no little labor. When Louis XVI. performed the 
ceremony, he touched two thousand four hundred persons. The 
form of proceeding was singular enough. The king's first phy- 
sician placed his hand on the head of the patient ; upon which a 
captain of the guard immediately seized and held the patient's 
hands closely joined together. The king then advanced, head un- 
covered, with his knights, and touched the sufferers. He passed 
his right hand from the forehead to the chin, and from one cheek 
to the other ; thus making the sign of the cross, and at the same 



206 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

time pronouncing the words, "May God cure thee; the king 
touches thee !" 

In connection with this subject, I may add here that Evelyn, in 
his diary, records that Charles II. " began first to touch for the 
evil, according to custom," on the 6th of July, 1660, and after this 
fashion. " His Majesty sitting under his state in the Banqueting 
House, the chirurgeons caused the sick to be brought, and led up 
to the throne, where they kneeling, the king strokes their faces or 
cheeks with both his hands at once, at which instant a chaplain, in 
his formalities, says, ' He put his hands upon them, and He healed 
them.' This is said to every one in particular. When they have 
been all touched, they come up again in the same order, and 
the other chaplain kneeling, and having angel-gold strung on white 
riband on his arm, delivers them one by one to his Majesty, who 
puts them about the necks of the touched as they pass, while the 
first chaplain repeats, < That is the true light who came into the 
world.' " The French ceremonial seems to me to have been the 
less pretentious ; for the words uttered by the royal head of the 
order of the Holy Ghost, simply formed a prayer, and an assertion 
of a fact : " May God heal thee ; the king touches thee !" And 
yet who can doubt the efficacy of the royal hand of Charles II., 
seeing that, at a single touch, he not only cured a scrofulous Qua- 
ker, but converted him into a good churchman ? 

The history of the last individual knight given in these imper- 
fect pages (Guy of "Warwick), showed how history and romance 
wove themselves together in biography. Coming down to a later 
period, we may find another individual history, that may serve to 
illustrate the object I have in view. The Chevalier de Bayard 
stands prominently forward. But there was before his time, a 
knight who was saluted by nearly the same distinctive titles which 
were awarded to Bayard. I allude to Jacques de Lelaing, known 
as " the knight without fear and without doubt." His history is 
less familiar to us, and will, therefore, the better bear telling. Be- 
sides, Bayard was but a butcher. If he is not to be so accounted, 
then tell us, gentle shade of Don Alonzo di Sotomayor, why thy 
painful spirit perambulates the groves of Elysium, with a scented 
handkerchief alternately applied to the hole in thy throat and the 
gash in thy face? Is it not that, with cruel subtlety of fence 



THE KNIGHTS OF THE HOLY GHOST. 207 

Bayard run his rapier into thy neck " four good finger-breadths," 
and when thou wast past resistance, did he not thrust his dagger 
into thy nostrils, crying the while, " Yield thee, Signor Alonzo, or 
thou diest !" The shade of the slashed Spaniard bows its head in 
mournful acquiescence, and a faint sound seems to float to us upon 
the air, out of which we distinguish an echo of " The field of 
Monervyne" 



208 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 



JACQUES DE LELAING, 

THE GOOD KNIGHT WITHOUT FEAR AND WITHOUT DOUBT. 

"Faites silence; je vais parler de ltd!" — Boileau. 

Between the city of Nanmr and the quaint old town of Dinant 
there is as much matter of interest for the historian as of beauty 
for the traveller and artist. War has been the most terrible 
scourge of the two localities on the Meuse which I have just 
named. Naniur has a present reputation for cutlery, and an old 
one for " slashing blades" of another description. Don John, the 
great victor at Lepanto, lies entombed in the city, victim of the 
poison and the jealousy of his brother Philip. There the great 
Louis proved himself a better soldier than Boileau did a poet, 
when he attempted to put the royal soldier's deeds into rhyme. 
Who, too, can stand at St. Nicholas's gate, without thinking of 
" my uncle Toby," and the Frenchmen, for whose dying he cared 
so little, on the glacis of Namur ? At present the place, it is true, 
has but a dull and dreamy aspect. Indeed, it may be said of the 
inhabitants, as of Molly Carew's lovers, that " It's dhrames and 
not sleep that comes into their heads." Such, at least, would seem 
to be the case, if I may draw a conclusion from what I saw during 
the last summer, at the bookseller's stall at the Namur station, 
where I found more copies of a work professing to interpret 
dreams than of any other production, whether grave or gaillard. 

Dinant, a curious old town, the high limestone-rocks behind 
which seems to be pushing it from off its narrow standing-ground 
into the Meuse, has even bloodier reminiscences than Namur ; but 
of these I will not now speak. Between the two cities, at the 
most picturesque part of the stream, and on the loftiest cliff which 
rises above the stream, is the vast ruin of the old titanic castle of 
Foilvache, the once rather noisy home of the turbulent household 



JACQUES DE LELAING. 209 

of those terrible brothers, known in chivalrous history as the 
" Four Sons of Aymon." During one of the few fine evenings 
of the last summer, I was looking up at this height, from the op- 
posite bank, while around me stood in groups a number of those 
brilliant-eyed, soft-voiced, ready-witted Walloons, who are said to 
be the descendants of a Roman legion, whose members colonized 
the country and married the ladies in it ! A Walloon priest, or 
one at least who spoke the dialect perfectly, but who had a strong 
Flemish accent when addressing to me an observation in French, 
remained during the period of my observation close at my side. 
" Are these people," said I to him, " a contented people ?" He 
beckoned to a cheerful-looking old man, and assuming that he was 
contented with the dispensation that had appointed him to be a 
laborer, inquired of him which part of his labor he loved best ? 
After pausing for a minute, the old peasant replied in very fair 
French, " I think the sweetest task I have is when I mow that 
meadow up at Bloquemont yonder, for the wild thyme in it em- 
balms the very air." " But your winter-time," said I, " must be 
a dark and dreary time." " Neither dark nor dreary/' was the 
remark of a tidy woman, his wife, who was, at the moment, on her 
knees, sewing up the ragged rents in the gaberdine of a Walloon 
beggar — "Neither dark nor dreary. In winter-time, at home, 
we don't want light to get the children about us to teach them 
their catechism." The priest smiled. "And as for spring-time," 
said her husband, " you should be here to enjoy it ; for the fields 
are then all flower, and the sky is one song." " There is poetry 
in their expressions," said I to the priest. " There is better than 
that," said he, " there is love in their hearts ;" and, turning to 
the woman who was mending the raiment of the passive mendi- 
cant, he asked her if she were not afraid of infection. " Why 
should I fear ?" was her remark. " I am doing but little ; Christ 
did more ; He washed the feet of beggars ; and we must risk 
something, if we would gain Paradise." The particular beggar 
to whom she was thus extending most practical charity was by no 
means a picturesque bedesman ; but, not to be behind-hand in 
%api<; toward him, I expressed compassion for his lot. " My lot 
is not so deplorable," said he, uncovering his head ; " I have God 
for my hope, and the charity of humane people for my succor." 

14 



210 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

As he said this, my eye turned from him to a shepherd who had 
just joined our group, and who was waiting to be ferried over to 
the little village of Houx. I knew him by name, and knew 
something of the solitariness of his life, and I observed to him, 
" Jacques, you, at least, have a dull life of it ; and you even now 
look weary with the long hours you have been spending alone." 
" Alone !" he exclaimed, in a joyful tone, " I am never alone, and 
never weary. How should I be either, when my days are passed 
in the company of innocent animals, and time is given me to 
think of God !" The priest smiled even more approvingly than 
before ; and I remarked to him, " We are here in Arcadia." 
" But not without human sin," said he, and pointing to a woman at 
a distance, who was in the employ of the farmer's wife, he asked 
the latter how she could still have anything to do with a well- 
known thief. " Eh, father," was the comment of a woman whom 
John Howard would have kissed, " starving her in idleness would 
not cure her of pilfering ; and between working and being well- 
watched, she will soon leave her evil habits." " You are a good 
Christian," I said to her, " be you of what community you may." 
" She is a good Catholic," added the priest. " I am what the good 
God has made me," was the simple reply of the Walloon wife ; 
" and my religion is this to go on my knees when all the house is 
asleep, and then pray for the whole world." "Ay, ay," was the 
chorus of those around her, " that is true religion." " It is a part 
of true religion," interposed the priest ; but I could not help think- 
ing that he would have done as well had he left Marie Justine's 
text without his comment. We walked together down to the bank 
of the river opposite the Chateau of the young Count de Levig- 
non the proprietor and burgomaster of Houx. I looked up from 
the modern chateau to the ruins of the vast castle where the sons 
of Aymon once held barbaric state, maintained continual war, and 
affected a reverence for the mother of Him who was the Prince 
of Peace. The good priest seemed to guess my thoughts, for he 
remarked, " We live now in better times ; the church is less splen- 
did, and chivalry less ' glorious,' if not extinct ; but there is a 
closer brotherhood of all men — at least," he added hesitatingly — 
" at least I hope so." " I can not remember," said I, " a single 
virtue possessed by either Aymon or his sons, except brute courage, 



JACQUES DE LELAING. 211 

and a rude sort of generosity, not based on principle, but born of 
impulse. It is a pity that Belgium can not boast of more perfect 
chevaliers than the old proprietors of Poilvache, and that you 
have not a hero to match with Bayard." " Belgium," was his 
answer, " can make such boast, and had a hero who had finished 
his heroic career long before Bayard was born. Have you never 
heard of ' the Good Knight without fear and without doubt' ?" 
" I have heard of one without fear and without reproach." " That 
title," he remarked, " was but a plagiarism from that conferred on 
Jacques de Lelaing, by his contemporaries." And then he sketched 
the outline of the good knight's career, and directed me to sources 
where I might gather more detailed intelligence. I was interested 
in what I learned, and it is because I hope also to interest readers 
at home, that I venture to place before them, however imperfectly 
rendered, a sketch of the career of a brave man before the time 
of Bayard; one who illustrates the old saying that — 

" Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona." 

Jaques de Lelaing, the good knight, without fear and without 
doubt, was born in the chateau of Lelaing, in the first quarter of 
the fifteenth century. The precise year is not known, but it was 
full half a century before the birth of Bayard. He came of a 
noble race ; that is, of a race, the male portion of which saw more 
honor in slaughter than in science. His mother was celebrated 
for her beauty as well as nobility. She was wise, courteous, and 
debonnaire ; well-mannered, and full of all good virtues. So, at 
least, in nearly similar terms, wrote George Chastellan of her, just 
two centuries ago. 

Jacques de Lelaing was as precocious a boy as the Duke of 
Wharton in his youth. At the age of seven, a priestly tutor had 
perfected him in French and Latin, and the good man had so im- 
bued him with literary tastes that, in after life, the good knight 
found time to cultivate the acquaintance of Captain Pen, as well 
as of Captain Sword ; and specimens of his handiwork are yet 
said to exist in the libraries of Flanders and Brabant. 

Jacques, however, was never a mere student, " sicklied o'er with 
the pale cast of thought." He loved manly sports ; and he was 
yet but a blooming youth when the " demoiseau of Cleves," nephew 



212 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

of that great Duke whom men, for no earthly reason, called Philip 
the Good, carried off his young friend from the castle of Lelaing, 
and made of him a squire, not of dames, but of knights, in the 
turbulent court of the ducal Philip, with the benevolent qualifica- 
tion to his name. 

The youth entered upon his career with a paternal provision 
which bespoke at once the liberality and the wisdom of his father, 
stout William de Lelaing. The sire bestowed upon his son four 
splendid horses, a well-skilled groom, and a "gentleman of ser- 
vice" which, in common phrase, means a valet, or " gentleman's 
gentleman." But the young soldier had more than this in his 
brain ; namely, a well-lettered cleric, commissioned to be for ever 
expounding and instructing, with a special object, to boot, that 
Jacques should not forget his Latin ! Excellent sire thus to care 
for his son ! If modern fathers only might send into barracks with 
their sons, when the latter first join their regiments, reverend 
clerks, whose office it should be to keep their pupils well up in 
their catechism, the Eton grammar, and English orthography, 
what a blessing it would be to the young gentlemen and to all 
acquainted with them ! As it is, we have officers worse instructed 
and less intelligent than the sons of the artists who make their 
uniforms. 

When Jacques went forth into the world, his sire gave him as 
good advice as Polonius threw away on his son Laertes. The sum 
of it was according to the old French maxim, " Noblesse oblige" — 
" Inasmuch," said the old man, " as you are more noble than others 
by birth, so," said he, " should you be more noble than they by 
virtues." The hearty old father added an assurance, that " few 
great men gained renown for prowess and virtue who did not 
entertain love for some dame or damoislle." This last, however, 
was but an equivocal assurance, for by counselling Jacques to fall 
in love with " some dame or damoiselle," he simply advised him 
to do so with any man's wife or daughter. But it was advice com- 
monly given to young gentlemen in arms, and is, to this day, com- 
monly followed by them. Jacques bettered the paternal instruction, 
by falling in love with two ladies at the same time. As ambitious 
youths are wont to do, he passed by the white and pink young 
ladies whom he met, and paid his addresses, with remarkable sue- 



JACQUES DE LELAING. 218 

cess, to two married duchesses. Neither of these suspected that 
the smooth-chinned young u squire" was swearing eternal fidelity 
to the other, or that this light-mailed Macheath wooed his madiae- 
val Polly with his pockets full of " favors," just bestowed on him 
by an unsuspecting Lucy. Thus has love ever been made by offi- 
cers and highwaymen. 

But if Jacques loved two, there was not a lady at the Court of 
Burgundy who did not love him. The most virtuous of them 
sighingly expressed a wish that their husbands, or their lovers, 
were only like him. The men hated him, while they affected to 
admire his grace, his bearing, and his irresistible bravery. Jacques 
very complacently accepted the love of the women and the envy 
of the men ; and feeling that he had something to be thankful for, 
he repaired to the shrine of the Virgin at Hal, and thanked " Our 
Lady," accordingly. . 

Now Philip the Good was good only just as Nicholas the Czar 
was " good." He had a fair face and a black heart. Philip, like 
Nicholas, joined an outward display of conjugal decency with some 
private but very crapulous indecency ; and the Duke, like the 
Czar, was the appalling liar of his day. Philip had increased the 
ducal territory of Burgundy by such means as secured Finland to 
Muscovy, by treachery of the most fiendish quality; and in 1442, 
affecting to think that Luxembourg was in the sick condition 
which Nicholas described as the condition of Turkey — when the 
imperial felon thought he was making a confederate of Sir Hamil- 
ton Seymour, the Duke resolved to seize on the territory in ques- 
tion, and young Jacques de Lelaing was in an ecstacy of delight at 
being permitted to join in this most rascally of expeditions. 

Within a year, desolation was spread throughout a wide district. 
Fire and sword did their devastating work, and the earth was 
swept of the crops, dwellings, and human beings, which lay be- 
tween the invaders and Luxembourg. The city was ultimately 
taken by surprise, and the good Philip delivered it up to pillage ; 
then ensued a* scene which hell itself could not equal; and the 
Duke and his followers having enacted horrors from which devils 
would have recoiled, they returned to Brussels, where they were 
received with ten times more delight than if they had come back 



214 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

from an expedition which had been undertaken for the benefit of 
humanity. 

"What was called peace now followed, and Jacques de Lelaing, 
having fleshed his maiden sword, and gained the praise of brave 
men, and the love of fair women, resolved to commence a series 
of provincial excursions for his own especial benefit. As, in mod- 
em times, professors without scholars, and actors without engage- 
ments, wander from town to town, and give lectures at " the King's 
Arms," so Jacques de Lelaing went forth upon his way, offering 
to fight all comers, in presence of kings themselves. 

His first appearance on this provincial tour was at Xancy, in 
1445, where a brilliant French Court was holding joyous festival 
while awaiting the coming of Suffolk, who was commissioned to 
escort to England a royal bride, in the person of Margaret of 
Anjou. The French knights made light of the soldier of Burgun- 
dy ; but Jacques, when announcing that he was the holder of the 
tournament, added that no French knight should unhorse him, un- 
less God and his good lady decreed otherwise. 

The latter was not likely, and he felt himself secure, doubly so, 
for he rode into the lists decorated with favors, gold embroidery, 
and rich jewels, the gifts of the Duchesses of Orleans and Calabria, 
each of whom fondly believed that she was the sole fair one by 
whose bright eyes Jacques de Lelaing swore his prettiest oath. 
Accordingly, there was not a cavalier who rode against him in that 
passage of arms, who left the field otherwise than with broken or 
bruised bones. " What manner of man will this be ?" cried they, 
" if, even as a lad, he lays on so lustily ?" 

The lad, at the subsequent banquet, to which he was borne in 
triumph, again proved that he had the capacity of a man. He 
was fresh as a rose just blown ; gay as a lark in early spring. 
The queens of France and Sicily conversed with him by the half 
hour, while ladies of lower degree gazed at him till they sighed ; 
and sighed, knowing full well why, and caring very much, where- 
fore. Charles VH. too, treated him with especial distinction, and 
conferred on him the rich prizes he had won as victor in the rough 
tourney of the day. But there were other guerdons awarded him 
that night, which he more highly prized. Jacques visited the 
Duchess of Orleans in her bower, and carried away with him, on 



JACQUES DE LELAING. 215 

leaving, the richest diamond she had to bestow. He then passed 
to the pavilion of the Duchess of Calabria, a lady who, among 
other gifts willingly made by her, placed upon his finger a brilliant 
ruby set in a gorgeous gold ring. He went to his own bed that 
night as impudently happy as a modern Lifeguardsman who is 
successfully fooling two ladies' maids. His cleric had left him, 
and Jacques had ceased to care for the keeping-up of his Latin, 
except, perhaps, the conjugation of the imperative mood of amo. 
" Amemus," let us love, was the favorite part of the mood, and the 
most frequently repeated by him and his brace of duchesses. 

Sometime after this very successful first appearance, and toward 
the end of 1445, our doughty squire was traversing the cathedral 
of Notre Dame of Antwerp, and was on the point of cursing the 
singers for their bad voices, just as one might be almost justified 
in doing now, so execrable are they; he was there and thus en- 
gaged, when a Sicilian knight, named Bonifazio, came jingling his 
spurs along the transept, and looking jauntingly and impertinently 
as he passed by. Jacques looked boldly at this " pretty fellow" of 
the time, and remarked that he wore a golden fetter ring on his 
left leg, held up by a chain of the same metal fastened to a circlet 
above his knee. His shield bore the device, " Who has fair lady, 
let him look to her well!" "It's an impertinent device," said 
Jacques, touching the shield, by way of token that he would fight 
the bearer for carrying it. " Thou art but a poor squire, albeit a 
bold man," said the Sicilian, with the air of one who was half in- 
clined to chastise the Hainaulter for his insolence. Toison d'Or, 
the herald, whispered in the ear of the Hainaulter ; thereupon, 
Jacques exclaimed, " If my master, Duke Philip, will give me 
permission to fight, thou darest not deny me, on his Grace's terri- 
tory." Bonifazio bowed by way of assent. The permission was 
gained, and the encounter came off at Ghent. The first day's 
combat was a species of preliminary struggle on horseback, in 
which Jacques showed himself so worthy of the spurs he did not 
yet wear, that Philip fastened them to his heels the next day, and 
dubbed him Knight in solemn form. As the combatants strode 
into the lists, on the second day, the Duke of Orleans remarked to 
his Duchess, that Jacques was not so " gent as the Sicilian." The 
Duchess smiled, as Guinever smiled when she looked on Sir 



216 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

Launcelot, while her husband, King Arthur, commented upon him ; 
and she said, in phrase known to all who read Spenser, " he loves 
a lady gent;" and she added, with more of the smile and less of 
the blush, " he is a better man than the Sicilian, and, to my think- 
ing, he will this day prove it." 

" We shall see," remarked the Duke carelessly. 

" We shall see," re-echoed the Duchess, with the sunniest of 
smiles. 

Jacques, like the chivalric " gent" that he was, did honor to the 
testimony of the Duchess. The combatants went at it, like stout 
men. Jacques belabored his antagonist with a staff, the Sicilian 
answered by thrusting a javelin at his adversary's uncovered face. 
They then flung away their arms and their shields, and hewed at 
each other with their battle-axes. Having spoiled the edges of 
these, and loosened them from their handles, by battering at each 
other's skulls, they finally drew their lusty and well-tempered 
swords, and fought so fiercely that the gleaming of their swiftly 
manoeuvred blades made them seem as if they were smiting each 
other with lightning. Jacques had well-nigh dealt a mortal thrust 
at the Sicilian, when, at the intervention of the Duke of Orleans, 
Philip the Good flung his truncheon into the lists, and so saved 
the foreign knight, by ending the fray. The Duchess reproved 
her consort for being over-intrusive, but she smiled more gleesomely 
than before. " Whither away, Sir Jacques ?" asked she, as the 
latter modestly bowed on passing her — the multitude the while 
rending the welkin with their approving shout. " To the chapel 
in the wood," replied Jacques, " to render thanks for the aid vouch- 
safed to me by our Lady." " Marry," murmured the Duchess, 
" we will be there too." She thought it not less edifying to see 
knight at his devotions than at beholding him in the duello. " I 
am grateful to the Lady of Good Succor," said Jacques. " And 
thou doest right loyally," was the comment of the Duchess. 

The victory of the Belgian cavalier over the Sicilian gained for 
him the distinctive name which he never lost, that of " the Good 
Knight." To maintain it, he proceeded to travel from court to court, 
as pugilists itinerate it from fair to fair, to exhibit prowess and to 
gather praise. The minor pugilist looks to pence as well as praise, 
and the ancient knight had an eye to profit also — he invariably 



JACQUES DE LELAING. 217 

carried off the horse, armor, and jewels of the vanquished. As 
Sir Jacques deemed himself invincible, he looked to the realization 
of a lucrative tour. " Go on thy way, with God's blessing," ex- 
claimed his sire. " Go on thy way, Jacques," murmured his 
mother through her tears ; " thou wilt find ointment in thy valise, 
to cure all bruises. Heaven send thee a surgeon, and thou break 
thy bones." 

Across the French frontier merrily rode Sir Jacques, followed 
by his squire, and attended by his page. From his left arm hung 
a splendidly-wrought helmet, by a chain of gold — the prize offered 
by him to any one who could overcome him in single combat. 
Jacques announced that, in addition, he would give a diamond to 
any lady or demoiselle indicated to him by his conqueror. He 
stipulated that whichever combatant first dropped his axe, he should 
bestow a bracelet upon his adversary ; and Jacques would only 
fight upon the condition that neither knight should be fastened in 
his saddle — a regulation which I should never think of seeing in- 
sisted upon anywhere, except by equestrian aldermen when they 
amble on Mr. Batty's horses, to meet the Sovereign at Temple 
Bar. For the rest Jacques put his trust in God, and relied upon 
the strength given him in the love of " the fair lady who had more 
power over him than aught besides throughout the entire world." 
A hundred ladies fair, matrons and maids, who heard of this well- 
advertised confidence, did not hesitate to exclaim, " Delicious fel- 
low ! He means me /" 

It was the proud boast of Jacques, that he traversed the capital, 
and the provincial cities of France, without meeting with a knight 
who would accept his defiance. It would be more correct to say 
— a knight who could take up his challenge. Charles VII. for- 
bade his chivalry from encountering the fierce Hainaulter any- 
where but at the festive board. In the South of France, then held 
by the English, he met with the same civility ; and he rode fairly 
into Spain, his lance in rest, before his onward career was checked 
by the presence of an adversary. That adversary was Don Diego 
de Guzman, Grand-master of Calatrava, and, although he knew it 
not, ancestor to a future Empress of the French. The Don met 
the Belgian on the borders of Castile, and accepted his published 
challenge out of mere love, as the one silly fellow said of the other, 



218 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

out of mere love for his " tres aimee dame." The " dames" of those 
days enjoyed nothing so much as seeing the gentlemen thwack 
each other ; and considering what a worthless set these latter, for 
the most part, were, the ladies had logically comic reasons to sup- 
port their argument. 

It was necessary, however, for Don Diego to obtain the consent 
of his sovereign to encounter in mortal combat a knight of the 
household of Burgundy, then in alliance with Spain. The Sover- 
eign was absent from the country, and while an answer was being 
expected from him to the application duly made, Jacques, at the 
head of a most splendid retinue, trotted leisurely into Portugal, to 
tempt the Lusitanian knights to set their lances against him. He 
rode forward to the capital, and was greeted by the way, as if he 
had been as illustrious a monarch as his ducal master. It was one 
ovation, from the frontier to Lisbon, where he was welcomed by 
the most crowded of royal balls, at which the King (Alphonso 
XV.) invited him to foot it with the Queen. The King, however, 
was but an indifferent master of the ceremonies. The late Mr. 
Simpson of Vauxhall, or the illustrious Baron Nathan of Eosher- 
ville, would never have dreamed of taking the lady to introduce 
her to the gentleman. This uncourteous process was, however, 
the one followed by Alphonso, who taking his consort by the hand, 
led her to Sire Jacques, and bad him tread a measure with her. 
Messire Jacques consented, and there was more than enough of 
dancing, and feasting, and pleasure-seeking, but no fighting. Lis- 
bon was as dull to the Belgian as Donnybrook Fair without a 
skrimmage used to be to all its lively habitues. " I have had a 
turn with the Queen," said Jacques, " let me now have a tourney 
with your captains." " Burgundy is my good friend," answered 
the King — and he was right in a double sense, for Burgundy was 
as dear to him as Champagne is to the Czar's valet, Frederick 
William, who resides at Berlin. " Burgundy is our good friend," 
answered Alphonso, " and Heaven forbid that a knight from such 
a court should be roughly treated by any knights at mine." " By 
St. George ! I defy them !" exclaimed Jacques. " And even so 
let it rest," said the monarch ; " ride back to Castile, and do thy 
worst upon the hard ribs of the Guzman." Jacques adopted the 
suggestion ; and on the 3d of February, 1 447, there was not a 



JACQUES DE LELAING. 219 

bed in Valladolid to be had "for love or money ;" so crowded was 
that strong-smelling city with stronger-smelling Spaniards, whose 
curiosity was even stronger than the odors they distilled, to wit- 
ness the " set-to" between the Belgian Chicken and the Castile 
Shaver ! 

I will not detail the preliminary ceremonies, the processions to 
the field, the entry of the sovereigns, the fluttering of the ladies, 
the excitement of the knights, and the eagerness of the countless 
multitude. Jacques was on the ground by ten o'clock, where 
Guzman kept him waiting till three ; and then the latter came 
with an axe so much longer than that wielded by the Belgian, that 
even the Spanish umpires forbade its being employed. Don 
Diego's own " godfather" for the occasion was almost minded to 
thump him with the handle ; and there was all the trouble in the 
world to induce him to select another. This being effected, each 
knight was conducted to his tent, with the understanding that he 
was not to issue therefrom until the clarions had thrice sounded by 
way of signal. At the very first blast, however, out rushed the 
Guzman, looking as ferocious as a stage Richard who has killed 
five false Bichmonds, and is anxiously inquiring for the real one 
wherewith to finish the half-dozen. The too volatile Don was 
beckoned back by the chief herald as haughtily as when the sem- 
piternal Widdicombe points out with his whip some obvious duty 
to be performed by Mr. Merryman. Diego retired muttering, but 
he again appeared in front of his tent at the second note of sum- 
mons from the trumpet, and only withdrew after the king had 
assailed him " with an ugly word." At the third " flourish," the 
two champions flew at each other, battle-axe in hand. With this 
weapon they hammered at each other's head, until there was little 
sense left in either of them. At length, Diego was disarmed; 
then ensued a contest made up partly of wrestling and partly of 
boxing ; finally, they had recourse to their swords, when the king, 
perceiving that murder was likely to ensue, to one or both, threw 
his baton into the lists, put an end to the combat, and refused per- 
mission to the adversaries to continue the struggle on horseback. 
The antagonists shook hands, and the people shouted. The Span- 
ish knight is deemed, by Belgian chroniclers, as having come off 
" second best" in the struggle ; but it is also clear that Diego de 



220 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

Guzman was by far the " toughest customer" that ever confronted 
Jacques de Lelaing. There was some jealousy on the part of the 
Iberian, but his behavior was, altogether, marked by generosity. 
He praised the prowess of Jacques, and presented him with an An- 
dalusian horse covered with the richest trappings ; and de Lelaing, 
as unwilling to be outdone in liberality as in fight, sent to Guzman, 
by a herald, a magnificent charger, with coverings of blue velvet 
embroidered in gold, and a saddle of violet velvet, to be seated in 
which, was of itself a luxury. Much dancing at court followed ; 
and finally, the " good knight" left Valladolid loaded with gifts from 
the king, praises from men, and love from the ladies, who made 
surrender of more hearts than he had time to accept. 

In Navarre and in Aragon he challenged all comers, but in 
vain. Swords slept in scabbards, and battle-axes hung quietly 
from saddle-bows, and there was more feasting than fighting. At 
length Jacques, after passing through Perpignan and Narbonne, 
arrived at Montpelier, where he became the guest of the famous 
Jacques Coeur, the silversmith and banker of Charles VII. Old 
Coeur was a hearty old host, for he offered the knight any amount 
of money he would honor him by accepting ; and he intimated 
that if De Lelaing, in the course of his travels had found it neces- 
sary to pawn any of his plate or jewelry, he (Jacques Coeur) 
would redeem it free of expense. " My good master, the Duke 
of Burgundy," replied the errant chevalier, " provides all that is 
necessary for me, and allows me to want for nothing ;" and there- 
upon he went on his way to the court of Burgundy, where he was 
received with more honor than if he had been executing a mission 
for the especial benefit of humanity. 

But these honors were little, compared with the rejoicings which 
took place when the " good knight" revisited his native chateau, 
and the parents who therein resided. His sire hugged him till his 
armor was warm again ; and his lady mother walked about the 
halls in a state of ecstacy and thanksgiving. Finally, the rafters 
shook at the efforts of the joyous dancers, and many a judicious 
matron instructed her daughter how Jacques, who subdued the 
stoutest knights, might be himself subdued by the very gentlest 
of ladies. The instruction was given in vain. The good cheva- 
lier made love alike to young widows, wives, and daughters, and 



JACQUES DE LELAING. 221 

having broken more hearts than he ever broke lances, he suddenly- 
left home in search of new adventures. 

Great was the astonishment, and that altogether of a pleasurable 
sort, when the herald Charolais appeared at the Scottish court in 
July, 1449, and delivered a challenge from Jacques to the whole 
of the Douglases. It was accepted in their name by James 
Douglas, the brother of the lieutenant-general of the kingdom ; and 
in December of the year last named, Jacques, with a retinue of 
fighting uncles, cousins, and friends, embarked at Ecluse and set 
sail for Caledonia. The party were more battered about by the 
sea than ever they had been by enemy on land ; and when they 
arrived at Leith, they looked so " shaky," were so pale and hag- 
gard, and had so little of a " slashing" look, wrapped up as they 
were in surcoats and comforters, that the Scottish cavaliers, ob- 
serving the draggled condition of the strangers and of the plumes 
which seemed to be moulting from their helmets, fairly asked them 
what motive induced them to come so far in so sorry a plight, for 
the mere sake of getting bruised by knights ashore after having 
been tossed about, sick and sorry, during whole nights at sea. 
When the northern cavaliers heard that honor and not profit had 
moved the Belgian company, they marvelled much thereat, but 
prepared themselves, nevertheless, to meet the new-comers in 
dread encounter at Stirling. 

James II. presided at the bloody fray, in which three fought 
against three. What the Scottish chroniclers say of the struggle, 
I can not learn, but the Belgian historians describe their cham- 
pions as having been eminently victorious with every arm ; and, 
according to them, the Douglases were not only soundly drubbed, 
but took their beating with considerable sulkiness. But there is 
much poetry in Belgian history, and probably the doughty Doug- 
las party may not have been so thoroughly worsted as the pleasant 
chroniclers in question describe them to have been. No doubt 
the conquerors behaved well, as we know "les braves Beiges" 
have never failed to do, if history may be credited. However 
this may be, Jacques and his friends hurried from Scotland, ap- 
peared at London before the meek Lancastrian king, Henry VI. ; 
and as the latter would not license his knights to meet the Bur- 
gundians in the lists, the foreign fighting gentlemen had their pass- 



222 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

ports vise, and taking passage in the fast sailer "Flower of 
Hainault," duly arrived at home, where they were hailed with 
enthusiasm. 

Jacques had short space wherein to breathe. An English 
knight, named Thomas Karr, speedily appeared at the court of 
Philip the Duke, and challenged De Lelaing, for the honor of old 
England. This affair caused a great sensation, and the lists were 
dressed in a field near Bruges. The English knight was the 
heavier man in flesh and armor, but Jacques, of course, was the 
favorite. Dire was the conflict. The adversaries strove to fell 
each other with their axes, as butchers do oxen. Karr paralyzed, 
if he did not break, the arm of Jacques ; but the Belgian, dropping 
his axe, closed with his foe, and after a struggle, fell with and 
upon him. Karr was required, as a defeated man, to carry the 
gauntlet of the victor to the lady pointed out by him. But ob- 
stinate Tom Karr protested against this, as he had only fallen on 
his elbow. The umpires declared that he had had a full fall, 
" head, belly, arms, and legs ;" Jacques, however, was generous 
and would not insist. On the contrary, adverting to the fact that 
he had himself been the first to drop his own axe, he presented 
Karr with a rich diamond, as the forfeit due by him who first lost 
a weapon in the combat. 

Karr had terribly wounded Jacques, and the wound of the lat- 
ter took long to cure. The Duke Philip hastened his convales- 
cence by naming him counsellor and chamberlain ; and as soon as 
the man so honored by his master, had recovered from his wounds, 
he repaired to Chalons on Saone, where he opened a " tourney," 
which was talked of in the country for many a long year after- 
ward. Jacques had vowed that he would appear in the closed 
lists thirty times before he had attained his thirtieth year ; and 
this tourney at Chalons was held by him against all comers, in 
order the better to enable him to fulfil his vow. The detail would 
be tedious ; suffice it to say that the affair was of barbarian magnifi- 
cence, and that knights smashed one another's limbs, for personal 
honor, ladies' love, and the glory of Our Lady in Tears ! Rich 
prizes were awarded to the victors, as rich forfeits were exacted 
from the vanquished, and there was not only a sea of good blood 
spilt in this splendidly atrocious fray, but as much bad blood made 



JACQUES DE LELAING. 223 

as there was good blood shed. But then there was empty honor 
acquired, a frail sort of affection gained, and an impalpable glory 
added to the non-existent crown of an imaginary Venus Victrix, 
decorated with the name of Our Lady of Tears ! What more 
could true knights desire ? Chivalry was satisfied ; and common- 
place men, with only common sense to direct them, had to look on 
in admiring silence, at risk of being cudgelled if they dared to 
speak out. 

Jacques was now at the height of his renown. He was " the 
good knight without fear and without doubt ;" and Duke Philip 
placed the last rose in his chaplet of honor, by creating him a 
knight of the illustrious order of the Golden Fleece. Thus dis- 
tinguished, he rode about Europe, inviting adversaries to measure 
swords with him, and meeting with none willing to accept the in- 
vitation. In 1451 he was the embassador of Burgundy at Rome, 
charged to negotiate a project of crusade against the Turks. M. 
Alexander Henne, the author of the best compendium, gathered 
from the chronicles, of the deeds of Jacques de Lelaing — says 
that after the knight's mission to Rome, he appeared at a passage 
of arms held in the park at Brussels, in honor of the Duke of 
Burgundy's son, the Count of Charolais, then eighteen years of 
age, and about to make his first appearance in the lists. The 
Duchess, tender of her son as the Dowager Czarina who kept her 
boys at home, and had not a tear for other mothers, whose chil- 
dren have been bloodily sacrificed to the savage ambition of 
Nicholas — the Duchess careful of the young Count, was desirous 
that he should make essay before he appeared in the lists. 
Jacques de Lelaing was accordingly selected to run a lance with 
him. " Three days before the fete, the Duke, the Duchess, and 
the Court repaired to the park of Brussels, where the trial was to 
be made. In the first onset, the Count de Charolais shattered his 
lance against the shield of Jacques, who raised his own weapon, 
and passed without touching his adversary. The Duke perceived 
that the good knight had spared his young adversary ; he was dis- 
pleased thereat, and sent Jacques word that if he intended to con- 
tinue the same course, he would do well to meddle no further in 
the matter. Other lances were then brought, and Jacques, run- 
ning straight against the Count, both lances flew into splinters. 



224 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

At this incident, the Duchess, in her turn, gave expression to her 
discontent; but the Duke only laughed; and thus mother and 
father were of different opinions ; the one desiring a fair trial, the 
other security for her son." On the day of the great tourney, 
there were assembled, with the multitude, on the great square at 
Brussels, not less then two hundred and twenty-five princes, barons, 
knights, and squires. Some of the noblest of these broke a lance 
with, and perhaps the limbs of, their adversaries. The Count de 
Charolais broke eighteen lances on that day, and he carried off the 
the prize, which was conferred upon him by the ladies. 

This was the last of the show-fights in which Jacques de 
Lelaing exhibited himself. The bloodier conflicts in which he 
was subsequently engaged, were far less to his credit. They 
formed a part of the savage war which the despotic Duke and the 
nobles carried on against the free and opulent cities, whose spirit 
of liberty was an object of hatred, and whose wealth was an ob- 
ject of covetous desire, to the Duke and his body of gentleman- 
like assassins. Many a fair town was devastated by the Duke 
and his followers, who affected to be inspired by religious feelings, 
a desire for peace, and a disinclination to make conquests. 
Whereby it may be seen that the late Czar was only a Burgun- 
dian duke enlarged, impelled by much the same principle, and 
addicted to a similar sort of veracity; It was a time of unmitigated 
horrors, when crimes enough were committed by the nobles to render 
the name of aristocracy for ever execrable throughout Belgium ; 
and atrocities were practised by the enraged commons, sufficient 
to insure, for the plebeians, the undying hatred of their patrician 
oppressors. There was no respect on either side for age, sex, or 
condition. The people, of every degree, were transformed into 
the worst of fiends — slaying, burning, violating, and plundering; 
and turning from their accursed work to kneel at the shrine of 
that Mary whose blessed Son was the Prince of Peace. Each 
side slaughtered, hung, or drowned its prisoners ; but the nobles 
gave the provocation by first setting the example, and the commons 
were not cruel till the nobility showed itself alike destitute of 
honor and of mercy. The arms of the popular party were nerved 
by the infamy of their adversaries, but many an innocent man on 
either side was condemned to suffer, undeservedly, for the sins of 



JACQUES DE LELAING. 225 

others. The greatest efforts were made against the people of the 
district and city of Ghent, but all Flanders sympathized with them 
in a war which was considered national. In the struggle, the 
Duke won no victory over the people for which the latter did not 
compel him to pay a frightful price ; he was heartily sick of the 
war before it was half concluded — even when his banner was be- 
ing most successfully upheld by the strong arm and slender scruples 
of Jacques de Lelaing. 

The good knight was however, it must be confessed, among the 
few — if he were not the only one — of the betterminded nobles. 
He had been commissioned by the Duke to set fire to the Abbey 
of Eenaeme, and he obeyed without hesitation, and yet with 
reluctance. He destroyed the religious edifice with all which it 
contained, and which could be made to burn ; but having thus 
performed his duty as a soldier, he forthwith accomplished his 
equally bounden duty, as a Christian — and, after paying for three 
masses, at which he devoutly assisted, he confessed himself to a 
predicant friar, " making a case of conscience," says one of his 
biographers, " of having, out of respect for discipline, committed 
an act which the uprightness of his heart compelled him to con- 
demn as criminal." Never was there a better illustration of that 
so-called diverse condition of things which is said to represent a 
distinction without a difference. 

The repentance of Jacques de Lelaing came, it is hoped, in time. 
He did well, at all events, not to defer it any longer, for he was 
soon on the threshold of that world where faith ceases and belief 
begins. He was engaged, although badly wounded, in inspecting 
the siege-works in the front of the Chateau de Pouckes, that 
Flemish cradle of the Pooks settled in England. It was on a 
June afternoon of the year 1453, that Jacques, with a crowd of 
nobles half-encircling him, rode out, in pite of the protest of his 
doctors (because, as he said, if he were to remain doing nothing he 
should certainly die), in order that he might have something to do. 
There was a famous piece of artillery on the Burgundian side, 
which was sorely troublesome to the stout little band that was de- 
fending Pouckes. It was called the " Shepherdess," but never did 
shepherdess speak with so thundering-unlovely a voice, or fling 
her favors about her with such dire destruction to those upon whom 

15 



226 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

they were showered. Jacques drew up behind the manteau of 
this cannon, to watch (like our gallant seamen at Sebastopol) the 
effects of the shot discharged from it. At the same moment a 
stone projectile, discharged from a culverin by the hand of a young 
artilleryman of Ghent, who was known as the son of Henry the 
Blindman, struck Jacques on the forehead, carrying away the upper 
part of his head, and stretched him dead upon the field. A Car- 
melite brother rushed up to him to offer the succor and consolation 
of religion, but it was too late. Jacques had sighed out his last 
breath, and the friar decently folded the dead warrior's arms over 
his breast. A mournful troop carried the body back to the camp. 
The hero of his day died in harness. He had virtues that fitted 
him for a more refined, a more honest, in short, a more Christian, 
period. These he exercised whenever he could find opportunity, but 
such opportunity was rare. He lived at a period when, as M. de Sis- 
mondi has remarked, " Knights thought of nothing but equalling the 
Rolands and Olivers of the days of Charlemagne, by the destruction 
of the vile canaille" — a sort of pastime which has been recently 
recommended in our senate, although the days of chivalry be gone. 
The noble comrades of Jacques, as M. ITenne observes, acknowl- 
edged but one species of supreme pleasure and glory, which con- 
sisted in making flow abundantly the blood of villains — or, as they 
are now called, the lower orders. But in truth the modern " villain" 
or the low-class man is not exclusively to be found in the ranks 
which have had such names applied to them. As Bosquier- 
Gavaudan used so joyously to sing, some thirty years ago, in the 
Mrmite de SL Avelle : — 

" Les gens de bien 

Sont souvent des gens de rien ; 
Et les gens de rien 

Sont souvent des gens de bien !" 

For a knight, Jacques was really a respectable man, and so dis- 
gusted with his butcher-like occupation, that, just before his death, 
he had resolved to surrender his estate to a younger brother, and, 
since fate had made of him a licensed murderer, to henceforth 
murder none but eastern infidels — to slay whom was held to be 
more of a virtue than a sin. Let us add of him, that he was too 
honest to earn a reputation by being compassionate to half-a-dozen 



JACQUES DE LELAING. 227 

helpless foes, after directing his men to slaughter a score of the 
mutilated and defenceless enemy. Jacques de Lelaing would 
sooner have sent his dagger up to the hilt in his own heart, than 
have violated the safeguard of a flag of truce. Such days and 
such doings of chivalry are not those most agreeable to Russian 
chivalry. Witness Odessa, where the pious governor directed the 
fire on a flag of truce which he swore he could not see ; and wit- 
ness the massacre of Hango, the assassins concerned in which ex- 
ploit were defended by their worthy superior De Berg. 

Jacques de Lelaing, however, it must not be forgotten, fell in a 
most unworthy cause — that of a despot armed against free people. 
His excellent master swore to avenge him; and he kept his word. 
When the Chateau de Pouckes was compelled to surrender, Philip 
the Good ordered every one found alive in it to be hung from the 
walls. He made exception only of a priest or two, one soldier 
afflicted with what was called leprosy, but which has now another 
name in the catalogue of avenging maladies, and a couple of boys. 
It was precisely one of these lads who had, by his well-laid shot, 
slain " the good knight without fear and without doubt ;" but Philip 
was not aware of this till the lad was far beyond his reach, and in 
safety at Ghent. 

Those who may be curious to know the course taken by the 
war until it was terminated by the treaty of Lille, are recommend- 
ed to study the Chronicles of De Lettenhooe, of Olivier de la 
Marche, of Chastellain, and Du Clery. I had no intention, at set- 
ting out, to paint a battle-piece, but simply to sketch a single figure. 
My task is done, however imperfectly, and, as old chroniclers were 
wont to say, May Heaven bless the gentle reader, and send pis- 
toles and abounding grace to the unworthy author. 

Such is the history of an individual ; let us now trace the for- 
tunes of a knightly house. The story of the Guises belongs en- 
tirely to chivalry and statesmanship. 



228 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 



THE FORTUNES OF A KNIGHTLY FAMILY. 

" This deals with nohler knights and monarcks, 
Full of great fears, great hopes, great enterprises." 

Antony Brewer, "Lingua" 

In the pleasant spring-time of the year 1506, a little boy, mount- 
ed on a mule, and accompanied by a serving man on foot, crossed 
over the frontier from Lorraine into France. The boy was a 
pretty child, some ten years old. He was soberly clad, but a 
merry heart beat under his gray jerkin ; and his spirits were as 
light as the feather in his bonnet. The servant who walked at 
his side was a simple yet faithful follower of his house ; but there 
was no more speculation in his face than there was in that of the 
mule. Nothing could have looked more harmless and innocent 
than the trio in question; and yet the whole — joyous child, plod- 
ding servitor, and the mule whose bells rang music as he trod — 
formed one of the most remarkable invasions of which the kino-- 
dom of France has ever been the victim. 

The boy was the fifth child of Rene and Philippa de Gueldres, 
the ducal sovereigns of Lorraine. This duchy, a portion of the 
old kingdom of Lotharingia — in disputes for the possession of 
which the children of Charlemagne had shed rivers of blood — had 
maintained its independence, despite the repeated attempts of Ger- 
many and France to reduce it to subjection. At the opening of 
the sixteenth century, it had seen a legal succession of sovereign 
and independent masters during seven centuries. The reigning 
duke was Rene, the second of that name. He had acquired es- 
tates in France, and he had inherited the hatred of Lorraine to 
the Capetian race which had dethroned the heirs of Charlemagne. 
It was for this double reason that he unostentatiously sent into the 
kingdom of France one of his sons, a boy of fair promise. The 



THE FORTUNES OP A KNIGHTLY FAMILY. 229 

mission of the yet unconscious child was to increase the territorial 
possessions of his family within the French dominions, and ulti- 
mately to rule both Church and State — if not from the throne, 
why then from behind it. 

The merry boy proved himself in course of time to be no un- 
fitting instrument for this especial purpose. He was brought up 
at the French court,, studied chivalry, and practised passages of 
arms with French knights ; was the first up at re.veillee, the last 
at a feast, the most devout at mass, and the most winning in ladies' 
bower. The princes of the blood loved him, and so did the prin- 
cesses. The arnry hailed him with delight ; and the church be- 
held in him and his brother, Cardinal John, two of those cham- 
pions whom it records with gladness, and canonizes with alacrity. 

Such was Claude of Lorraine, who won the heart and lands of 
Antoinette de Bourbon, and who received from Francis I. not 
only letters of naturalization, but the title of Duke of Guise. The 
locality so named is in Picardy. It had fallen to the house of 
Lorraine by marriage, and the dignity of Count which accompa- 
nied it was now changed for that of Duke. It was not long before 
Claude made the title famous. The sword of Guise was never 
from his grasp, and its point was unceasingly directed against the 
enemies of his new country. He shed his own blood, and spilled 
that of others, with a ferocious joy. Francis saw in him the 
warmest of his friends and the bravest of his soldiers. His 
bravery helped to the glory that was reaped at Marignan, at Fon- 
tarabia, and in Picardy. Against internal revolt or foreign inva- 
sion he was equally irresistible. His sword drove back the Impe- 
rialists of Germany within their own frontier ; and when on the 
night of Pavia the warriors of France sat weeping like girls amid 
the wide ruin around them, his heart alone throbbed with hopeful 
impulses, and his mind only was filled with bright visions of vic- 
tories to come. 

These came indeed, but they were sometimes triumphs that 
earned for him an immortality of infamy. The crest of his house 
was a double cross, and this device, though it was no emblem of 
the intensity of religion felt by those who bore it, ivas significant 
of the double sanguinary zeal of the family — a zeal employed 
solely for selfish ends. The apostolic reformers of France were, 



230 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

at this period, in a position of some power. Their preachers were 
in the pulpit, and their people in the field. They heard the gos- 
pel leaning on their swords ; and, the discourse done, they rushed 
bravely into battle to defend what they had heard. 

Against these pious but strong-limbed confederates the wrath 
of Guise was something terrible. It did not, like that of Francis 
I. — who banqueted one day the unorthodox friends whom he 
burned the next — alternate with fits of mercy. It raged without 
intermission, and before it the Reformers of Alsatia were swept 
as before a blast in whose hot breath was death. He spared nei- 
ther sex nor age ; and he justified his bloody deeds by blasphe- 
mously asserting that he was guided to them by the light of a cross 
which blazed before him hi the heavens. The church honored 
him with the name of " good and faithful servant ;" but there are 
Christian hearths in Alsatia where he is still whisperingly spoken 
of as " the accursed butcher." 

When his own fingers began to hold less firmly the handle of 
his sword, he also began to look among his children for those who 
were most likely to carry out the mission of his house. His eye 
marked, approvingly, the bearing of his eldest son Francis, Count 
D'Aumale ; and had no less satisfaction in the brothers of Francis, 
who, whether as soldiers or priests, were equally ready to further 
the interests of Lorraine, and call them those of Heaven. His 
daughter Mary he gave to James V. of Scotland ; and the bride 
brought destruction for her dowry. Upon himself and his chil- 
dren, Francis I., and subsequently Henry II., looked at last with 
mingled admiration and dread. Honors and wealth were lavished 
upon them with a prodigal and even treasonable liberality. The 
generous king gave to the insatiate Guise the property of the 
people ; and when these complained somewhat menacingly, Guise 
achieved some new exploit, the public roar of applause for which 
sanctioned a quiet enjoyment of his ill-gotten treasures. 

For the purpose of such enjoyment he retired to his castle at 
Joinville. The residence was less a palace than a monastery. It 
was inhabited by sunless gloom and a deserted wife. The neg- 
lected garden was trimmed at the coming of the duke, but not for 
his sake nor for that of the faithful Antoinette. Before the eyes 
of that faithful wife he built a bower for a mistress who daily de- 



THE FORTUNES OF A KNIGHTLY FAMILY. 231 

graded with blows the hero of a hundred stricken fields. He 
deprecated the rough usage of the courtesan with tears and gold ; 
and yet he had no better homage for the virtuous mother of his 
children, than a cold civility. His almost sudden death in 1550 
was accounted for as being the effect of poison, administered at 
the suggestion of those to whom his growing greatness was offen- 
sive. The accusation was boldly graven on his monument ; and 
it is probably true. No one however, profited by the crime. 

The throne found in his children more dangerous supporters 
than he had ever been himself; and the people paid for their 
popular admiration with loss of life and liberty. The church, 
however, exulted ; for Claude of Lorraine, first Duke of Guise, 
gave to it the legitimate son, Cardinal Charles, who devised the 
massacre of the day of St. Bartholomew; and the illegitimate 
son, the Abbe de Cluny, who, on that terrible day, made his dag- 
ger drink the blood of the Huguenots, till the wielder of it became 
as drunk with frenzy as he was wont to be with the fiery wine 
which was his peculiar and intense delight. 

The first Duke of Guise only laid a foundation, upon which he 
left his heirs and successors to build at their discretion. He had, 
nevertheless, effected much. He had gained for his family con- 
siderable wealth ; and if he had not also obtained a crown, he had 
acquired possession of rich crown-lands. The bestowing upon him 
of these earned popular execration for the king ; the people, at 
the same time, confessed that the services of Guise were worthy 
of no meaner reward. When King Francis saw that he was 
blamed for bestowing what the recipient was deemed worthy of 
having granted to him, we can hardly wonder that Francis, while 
acknowledging the merits of the aspiring family, bade the members 
of his own to be on their guard against the designs of every child 
of the house of Lorraine. 

But he was no child who now succeeded to the honors of his 
father, the first duke. Francis of Guise, at his elevation to the 
ducal title, saw before him two obstacles to further greatness. 
One was a weak king, Henry II.; and the other, a powerful 
favorite, the Constable de Montmorency, from whose family, it 
was popularly said, had sprung the first Christian within the realm 
of France. Francis speedily disposed of the favorite, and almost 



232 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

as speedily raised himself to the vacant office, which he exercised 
so as to further his remote purposes. In the meantime the king 
was taught to believe that his crown and happiness were depen- 
dent on his Lorraine cousins, who, on their side, were not only 
aiming at the throne of France for one member of the house, but 
were aspiring to the tiara for a second ; the crown of Naples for 
a third — to influence in Flanders and in Spain, and even to the 
diadem of Elizabeth of England, succession to which was recog- 
nised as existing in them, by Mary Stuart, in case of her own 
decease without direct heirs. It is said that the British Roman- 
ists looked forward with unctuous complacency to the period when 
the sceptre of this island should fall into the blood-stained grasp 
of a " Catholic Guise." 

It was not only the fortune of Francis to repair the ill luck en- 
countered in the field by Montmorency, but to gain advantages in 
fight, such as France had not yet seen. The Emperor Charles V. 
had well-nigh got possession of beleaguered Metz, when Guise 
threw himself into the place, rescued it from the Emperor, and 
swept the Imperialists out of France. His fiery wrath cooled 
only in presence of the wounded, to whom he behaved with gentle 
and helping courtesy. His gigantic labors here brought on an 
attack of fever ; and when he was compelled to seek rest in his 
house at Marchez, a host of priests and cardinals of his family 
gathered round his court, and excited him to laughter by rough 
games that suited but sorrily with their calling. 

The second duke inherited his father's hatred for " heretics." 
The great Colligny had been his bosom friend ; but when that 
renowned Reformer gave evidence of his new opinions upon re- 
ligious subjects, then ensued, first a coldness, then fits of angry 
quarrelling, and at last a duel, in which, though neither combatant 
was even scratched, friendship was slain for ever. Duke Francis 
was prodigal like his father, but then his brother, Cardinal Charles, 
was minister of the finances : and the king and his mistress, Diana 
de Poictiers, cared not how the revenue was managed, so that 
money was forthcoming when necessity pressed. The consequence 
was, that the king's exchequer was robbed to supply the extrava- 
gances of Guise. But then men began to associate with the name 
the idea of deliverance from oppression ; and they did not count 



THE FORTUNES OF A KNIGHTLY FAMILY. 233 

the cost. And yet victory did not invariably select for her throne 
the glittering helm of the aspiring duke. The pope had selected 
him as commander of the papal army acting against Naples, but 
intrigue paralyzed the arm which had never before been conquered, 
and the pontiff showered epigrams upon him instead of laurels. 

In this momentary eclipse of the sun of his glory, the duke 
placed his own neck under the papal heel. He served in the 
pope's chapel as an Acolyte, meekly bore the mantle of obese and 
sneering cardinals, and exhibited a humility which was not without 
success. When at a banquet given by a cardinal, Guise humbly 
sat down at the lower end of the table, he asked a French officer 
who was endeavoring to thrust in below him, " Why comest thou 
here, friend ?" " That it might not be said," answered the soldier, 
" that the representative of the King of France took the very 
lowest place at a priest's table !" 

From such reproaches Guise gladly fled, to buckle on his armor 
and drive back an invasion of France by the Hispano-Flemings 
on the north. The services he now rendered his country made 
the people almost forget the infamy of their king, who was wasting 
life in his capital, and the oppressive imposts of the financial car- 
dinal, whom the sufferers punningly designated as Cardinal La 
Buine. The ruin he achieved was forgiven in consideration of 
the glory accomplished by his brother, who had defeated and de- 
stroyed the armies which threatened the capital from the north ; 
and who had effected much greater glory by suddenly falling on 
Calais with a force of ten to one, and tearing from the English 
the last of the conquests till then held by them in France. Old 
Lord Wentworth, the governor, plied his artillery with a roar that 
was heard on the English coast : but the roar was all in vain. 
There was a proverb among our neighbors, and applied by them 
to every individual of mediocre qualifications, that " he was not 
the sort of man to drive the English out of France." That man 
was found in Guise ; and the capital began naturally to contrast 
him with the heartless king, who sat at the feet of a concubine, 
and recked little of the national honor or disgrace. And yet, the 
medals struck to commemorate the recovery of Calais bear the 
names only of Henri and Diana. They omit all mention of the 
great liberator, Guise ! 



234: THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

The faults of Henri, however, are not to be entirely attributed 
to himself. He had some feelings of compassion for the wretched 
but stout-hearted Huguenots, with whom, in the absence of Guise, 
he entered into treaties, which, Guise present, he was constrained 
to violate ! In pursuit of the visions of dominion in France, and 
of the tiara at Rome, the ambitious house sought only to gain the 
suffrages of the church and the faithful. To win smiles from 
them, the public scaffolds were deluged with the blood of heretics ; 
and all were deemed so who refused to doff their caps to the 
images of the virgin, raised in the highways at the suggestion of 
the duke and the cardinal. This terrific persecution begat remon- 
strance ; but when remonstrance was treated as if it were rebel- 
lion, rebellion followed thereupon ; as, perhaps, was hoped for ; 
and the swords of the Guisards went flashing over every district 
in France, dealing death wherever dwelt the alleged enemies of 
God, who dared to commune with Him according to conscience, 
rather than according to Rome. Congregations, as at Vassi, were 
set upon and slaughtered in cold blood, without resistance. In the 
Huguenot " temple" of this last place was found a Bible. It was 
brought to the duke. This noble gentleman could spell no better 
than the great Duke of Marlborough ; and Guise was, moreover, 
worse instructed in the faith which he professed. He looked into 
the Book of Life, unconscious of what he held, and with a won- 
dering exclamation as to what it might be all about, he flung it 
aside, and turned to the further slaughter of those who believed 
therein. 

In such action he saw his peculiar mission for the moment, but 
he was not allowed to pursue it unopposed. His intrigues and his 
cruelties made rebels even of the princes of the blood ; and Conde 
took the field to revenge their wrongs, as well as those of the 
Reformers. The issue was tried on the bloody day at Dreux, 
when the setting sun went down on a Protestant army routed, and 
on Conde a captive ; but sharing the bed, as was the custom of 
the time, of his proved victor Guise. Never did two more deadly 
enemies lie on the same couch, sleepless, and full of mutual sus- 
picion. But the hatred of Conde was a loyal hatred ; that of 
Guise was marked by treacherous malignity. The Protestant 
party, in presence of that hot fury, seemed to melt away like a 



THE FORTUNES OF A KNIGHTLY FAMILY. 235 

snow-wraith in the sun. He and his Guisards were the terror of 
the so-called enemies of the Faith. Those whom he could not 
reach by the sword, he struck down by wielding against them the 
helpless hand of the king, who obeyed with the passiveness of a 
Marionette, and raised stakes, and fired the pile, and gave the 
victim thereto, simply because Guise would so have it. 

The duke received one portion at least of his coveted reward. 
At every massacre of inoffensive Protestants, the Catholic pulpits 
resounded with biblical names, showered down upon him by the 
exulting preachers. When his banner had swept triumphantly 
over successive fields, whose after-crops were made rich by heret- 
ical blood, then did the church pronounce him to be a soldier 
divinely armed, who had at length " consecrated his hands, and 
avenged the quarrel of the Lord." 

Guise lived, it is true, at a period when nothing was held so 
cheap as life. Acts of cruelty were but too common in all fac- 
tions. If he delivered whole towns to pillage and its attendant 
horrors, compared with which death were merciful, he would him- 
self exhibit compassion, based on impulse or caprice. He was 
heroic, according to the thinking of his age, which considered 
heroism as being constituted solely of unflinching courage. In 
all other respects, the duke, great as he was, was as mean as the 
veriest knave who trailed a pike in his own bands. Scarcely a 
letter addressed to his officers reached them without having been 
previously read to their right worshipful master. There was 
scarcely a mansion in the kingdom, whose lord was a man of in- 
fluence, but that at that table and the hearth there sat a guest who 
was the paid spy of Francis of Guise. 

It is hardly necessary to add that his morality generally was on 
a par with the particular specimens we have given of it. Crowds 
of courtesans accompanied him to the camp, while he deliberately 
exposed his own wife, Anne of Este, the sister of Tasso's Leonora, 
to the insulting homage of a worthless king. Emphatically may 
it be said that the truth was not in him. He gloried in mendacity. 
2so other personage that I can call to mind ever equalled him in 
lying — except, perhaps, those very highly professing heroes who 
swagger in Greek tragedy. He procured, by a He, the capital 
conviction of Conde. The latter escaped the penalty, and taxed 



236 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

the duke with his falsehood. Guise swore by his sword, his life, 
his honor, his very soul, that he was innocent of the charge. 
Conde looked on the ducal liar with a withering contempt, and 
turned from him with a sarcasm that should have pierced him like 
a sword. Pointed as it was, it could not find way through his 
corslet to his heart. He met it with a jest, and deemed the sin 
unregistered. 

There was a watchful public, nevertheless, observing the prog- 
ress made toward greatness by the chivalric duke, and his brother 
the cardinal. Henry II. had just received the mortal blow dealt 
him at a tournament by the lance of Montgomery. Francis II., 
his brother, the husband of Mary Stuart, and therewith nephew 
to Guise, succeeded to the uneasy throne and painful privileges 
of Henri. On the night of this monarch's decease, two courtiers 
were traversing a gallery of the Louvre. " This night," said one, 
" is the eve of the Festival of the Three Kings." " How mean 
you by that ?" asked the other with a smile. " I mean," rejoined 
the first, " that to-morrow we shall have three monarchs in Paris 
— one of them, King of France; the others Kings in France — 
from Lorraine." 

Under the latter two, Duke and Cardinal, was played out the 
second act of the great political drama of Lorraine. It was alto- 
gether a melo-drama, in which there was abundance of light and 
shadow. At times, we find the hero exhibiting exemplary candor ; 
anon, he is the dark plotter, or the fierce and open slayer of his 
kind. There are stirring scenes of fights, wherein his adversaries 
draw their swords against him, at the instigation of a disgusted 
King, who no sooner saw Guise triumphant, than he devoted to 
death the survivors whom he had clandestinely urged into the fray. 

The battles were fought, on one side, for liberty of conscience ; 
on the other, for the sake of universal despotism. The bad side 
triumphed during a long season ; and field after field saw waving 
over it the green banner of Lorraine. Catherine de Medicis, and 
her son Charles IX., accompanied the Duke in more than one 
struggle, after the short-lived reign of Francis II. had come to an 
end. They passed, side by side, through the breach at Rouen ; 
but accident divided them at Orleans, where had assembled the 
gallant few who refused to despair for the Protestant cause. 



THE FORTUNES OF A KNIGHTLY FAMILY. 237 

Guise beleaguered the city, and was menacingly furious at its 
obstinacy in holding out. One evening he had ridden with his 
staff to gaze more nearly at the walls, from behind which defiance 
was flung at him. " You will never be able to get in," remarked 
roughly a too presuming official. " Mark me !" roared the chafed 
Duke, " yon setting sun will know to-morrow how to get behind 
that rampart ; and by Heaven, so will I !" He turned his horse, 
and galloped back alone to his quarters. He was encountered on 
his way by a Huguenot officer, Poltrot cle la Mer, who brought 
him down by a pistol-shot. The eyes of the dying Duke, as he 
lay upon the ground, met for the last time the faint rays of that 
departing sun, with which he had sworn to be up and doing on the 
morrow. He died in his hut. His condition was one of extreme 
" comfortableness." He had robbed the King's exchequer to grat- 
ify his own passions ; — and he thanked Heaven that he had been 
a faithful subject to his sovereign ! He had been notoriously un- 
faithful to a noble and virtuous wife ; and he impressed upon her 
with his faltering lips, the assurance that " generally speaking" his 
infidelity as a husband did not amount to much worth mentioning ! 
He confessed to, and was shriven by his two brothers, Cardinals 
John and Charles. The former was a greater man than the Duke. 
The latter was known in his own times and all succeeding, as " the 
bottle cardinal," a name of which he was only not ashamed, but 
his title to which he was ever ostentatiously desirous to vindicate 
and establish. 

The first Duke had acquired possession of crown-lands ; the 
second had at his disposal the public treasure ; and the third hoped 
to add to the acquisitions of his family the much-coveted sceptre 
of the Kings of France. 

Henri, surnamed Le Balafre, or " the scarred," succeeded his fa- 
ther in the year 1 5 60. During the greater portion of his subsequent 
life, his two principal objects were the destruction of Protestantism, 
and the possession of the King's person. He therewith flattered 
the national vanity by declaring that the natural limits of France, 
on two sides, were the Rhine and the Danube — an extension of 
frontier which was never effected, except temporarily, in the latter 
days of Napoleon. But the declaration entailed a popularity on 
the Duke which was only increased by his victory at Jarnac, 



238 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. « 

when the French Protestants not only suffered defeat, but lost 
their leader, the brave and unfortunate Conde. This gallant chief 
had surrendered, but he was basely murdered by a pistol-shot, and 
his dead body, flung across an ass, was paraded through the ranks 
of the victors, as a trophy. How far the Duke was an accomplice 
in the crime, is not determined. That such incidents were deemed 
lightly of by him, is sufficiently clear by his own proclamation in 
seven languages, wherein he accused Coligny as the instigator of 
the murder of the late Duke of Guise, and set a price upon that 
noble head, to be won by any assassin. 

For that so-called murder, Guise had his revenge on the day 
of St. Bartholomew, when he vainly hoped that the enemies of his 
house had perished for ever. On the head of more than one 
member of the house of Guise rests the res'ponsibility of that terri- 
ble day. During the slaughter, Guise gained his revenge, but lost 
his love. The cries of the victims were the nuptial songs chanted 
at the marriage-ceremony of Henri of Navarre and Margaret, the 
King's sister. The latter had looked, nothing loath, upon the suit 
offered to her by Guise, who was an ardent wooer. But the 
wooing had been roughly broken in upon by the lady's brother, 
the Due d'Anjou, who declared aloud in the Louvre, that if Guise 
dared look with lover's eyes upon " Margot," he would run his 
knife into the lover's throat ! The threat had its influence, and 
the unfaithful wooer, who had been all the while solemnly affianced 
to a Princess Catherine of Cleves, married that remarkable bru- 
nette, and showed his respect for her, by speaking and writing of 
her as " that amiable lady, the negress." It may be noticed in 
passing, that the objection of D'Anjou to Guise as a brother-in- 
law, was not personal; it had a political foundation. The two 
dukes became, indeed, brothers-in-law ; not by Guise marrying 
the sister of D'Anjou, but by D'Anjou marrying the sister' of 
Guise, and by sharing with her the throne which he, subsequently, 
occupied rather than enjoyed, as Henri III. 

When summoned to the throne by the unedifying death of 
Charles IX., Henry of Anjou was king of Poland. He escaped 
from that country with difficulty, in order to wear a more brilliant 
but a more fatal crown in France. He had no sooner assumed it, 
when he beheld the Guises encircling him, and leaving him neither 



THE FORTUNES OF A KNIGHTLY FAMILY. 239 

liberty nor will. The Protestants were driven into rebellion. 
They found a leader in Henry of Navarre, and Guise and his 
friends made war against them, irrespective of the King's consent, 
and cut in pieces, with their swords, the treaties entered into be- 
tween the two Henrys, without the consent of the third Henri — 
of Guise and Lorraine. The latter so completely enslaved the 
weak and unhappy sovereign, as to wring from him, against his 
remonstrance and conviction, the famous articles of Nemours, 
wherein it was solemnly decreed in the name of the King, and 
confirmed by the signature of Guise, that, thenceforward, it was 
the will of God that there should be but one faith in France, and 
that the opposers thereof would find that opposition incurred death. 
There is a tradition that when Henri III. was told of this de- 
cree, he was seated in deep meditation, his head resting upon his 
hand ; and that when he leaped to his feet with emotion, at the 
impiety of the declaration, it was observed that the part of his 
moustache which had been covered by his hand, had suddenly 
turned gray. 

The misery that followed on the publication of these infamous 
articles was widely spread, and extended to other hearths besides 
those of the Huguenots. Sword, pestilence, and famine, made a 
desert of a smiling country ; and the universal people, in their 
common sorrow, cursed all parties alike — "King and Queen, 
Pope and Calvin," and only asked from Heaven release from all, 
and peace for those who suffered by the national divisions. The 
King, indeed, was neither ill-intentional nor intolerant ; but Guise 
so intrigued as to persuade the " Catholic" part of the nation that 
Henri was incapable. Faction then began to look upon the pow- 
erful subject as the man best qualified to meet the great emergency. 
He fairly cajoled them into rebellion. They were, indeed, willing 
to be so cajoled by a leader so liberal of promises, and yet he was 
known to be as cruel as he engaged himself to be liberal. He 
often kept his own soldiers at a point barely above starvation ; 
and the slightest insubordination in a regiment entailed the penalty 
of death. To his foes he was more terrible still. As he stood in 
the centre of a conquered town that had been held by the Hugue- 
nots, it was sport to him to see the latter tossed into the flames. 
On one occasion he ordered a Huguenot officer to be torn asunder 



240 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

by young horses for no greater crime than mutilating a wooden 
idol in a church. The officer had placed the mutilated figure on 
a bastion of the city, with a pike across its breast, as a satire on 
the guardianship which such a protector was popularly believed 
to afford. 

He could, however, be humane when the humor and good reason 
for it came together. Thus he parted with a pet lioness, which 
he kept at his quarters, on the very sufficient ground that the 
royal beast had, on a certain morning, slain and swallowed one of 
his favorite footmen ! A commonplace lacquey he might have 
spared without complaining ; but he could not, without some irrita- 
tion, hear of a valet being devoured who, though a valet, had a pro- 
found belief that his master was a hero. 

The " Bartholomew" had not destroyed all the foes of the name 
of Guise. What was not accomplished on that day was sought 
to be achieved by the " League." The object of this society was 
to raise the Duke to the throne of Henri, either before or after 
the death of the latter. The King Avas childless, and the pre- 
sumptive heir to the throne, Henri of Navarre, was a Protestant. 
The Lorrainers had double reason, then, for looking to themselves. 
The reigning sovereign was the last of three brothers who had in- 
herited the crown, and there was then a superstitious idea that 
when three brothers had reigned in France, a change of dynasty 
was inevitable. 

Guise fired his followers with the assurance that the invasion 
of England, and the establishment of Popery there, should be an 
enterprise which they should be called upon to accomplish. The 
King was in great alarm at the " League," but he wisely consti- 
tuted himself a member. The confederates kept him in the dark 
as to the chief of their objects. The suspicious monarch, on the 
other hand, encouraged his minions to annoy his good cousin of 
Lorraine. One of these unworthy favorites, St. Megrim, did 
more : he slandered the wife of Guise, who took, thereon, a 
singular course of trial and revenge. He aroused Ins Duchess 
from her solitary couch, in the middle of the night, hissed in her 
alarmed ear the damning rumor that was abroad, and bade her 
take at once from his hands the dagger or the poison-cup, which 
he offered her ; — adding that she had better die, having so greatly 



THE FORTUNES OF A KNIGHTLY FAMILY. 241 

sinned. The offended and innocent wife cared not for life, since 
she was suspected, and drank off the contents of the cup, after 
protestation of her innocence. The draught was of harmless prep- 
aration, for the Duke was well assured of the spotless character 
of a consort whom he himself daily dishonored by his infidelities. 
He kissed her hand and took his leave ; but he sent a score of his 
trusty-men into the courtyard of the Louvre, who fell on St. 
Megrim, and butchered him almost on the threshold of the King's 
apartments. 

The monarch made no complaint at the outrage ; but he raised 
a tomb over the mangled remains of his favorite minion, above 
which a triad of Cupids represented the royal grief, by holding 
their stony knuckles to their tearless eyes, affecting the passion 
which they could not feel. 

In the meantime, while the people were being pushed to rebel- 
lion at home, the ducal family were intriguing in nearly every 
court in Europe. Between the intrigues of Guise and the reck- 
lessness of the King, the public welfare suffered shipwreck. So 
nearly complete was the ruin, that it was popularly said, " The 
Minions crave all : the King gives all ; the Queen-mother man- 
ages all ; Guise opposes all ; the Red Ass (the Cardinal) embroils 
all, and would that the Devil had all !" 

But the opposition of Guise was made to some purpose. By 
exercising it he exacted from the King a surrender of several 
strong cities. They were immediately garrisoned by Guisards, 
though held nominally by the sovereign. From the latter the 
Duke wrung nearly all that it was in the power of the monarch 
to yield ; but when Guise, who had a design against the life of the 
Protestant Henri of Navarre, asked for a royal decree prohibit- 
ing the granting of " quarter" to a Huguenot in the field, the 
King indignantly banished him from the capital. Guise feigned 
to obey; but his celebrated sister, the Duchess of Montpensier, 
refused to share in even a temporary exile. This bold woman 
went about in public, with a pair of scissors at her girdle, which, 
as she intimated, would serve for the tonsure of brother Henri of 
Valois, when weariness should drive him from a palace into a 
monastery. 

The King, somewhat alarmed, called around him his old Swiss 

16 



242 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

body guard, and as the majority of these men professed the re- 
formed faith, Guise made use of the circumstance to obtain greater 
ends than any he had yet obtained. The people were persuaded 
that their religion was in peril ; and when the Duke, breaking his 
ban, entered Paris and, gallantly attired, walked by the side of 
the sedan of Catherine of Medicis, on their way to the Louvre, 
to remonstrate with the unorthodox king, the church-bells gave 
their joyous greeting, and the excited populace hung upon the 
steps of the Duke, showering upon him blessings and blasphemous 
appellations. "Hosanna to our new son of David !" shouted 
those who affected to be the most pious ; and aged women, kissing 
his garment as he passed, rose from their knees, exclaiming, " Lord, 
now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have 
seen thy salvation !" 

The less blasphemous or the more sincere sufficiently expressed 
their satisfaction by hailing him, as he went on his way, smiling, 
" King of Paris !" 

The sound of this title reached the ears of Henri. Coupling 
it with the unauthorized return of Guise to court, he passed into 
alternate fits of ungovernable wrath and profound melancholy. 
He was under the influence of the latter when there fell on his 
ear, words which make him start from his seat — "Percutiam pas- 
torem, et dispergentur oves ;" and when the Monarch looked round 
for the speaker, he beheld the Abbe d'Elbene, who had thus calm- 
ly quoted Scripture, in order to recommend murder. The King, 
though startled, was not displeased. On the contrary, he smiled ; 
and the smile was yet around his lips, and in his eyes, when Guise 
entered the presence, and mistook the expression of the royal face 
for one of welcome. The Duke, emboldened by what he saw, 
hurried through a long list of grievances, especially dwelling on 
the lenity, not to say favor, with which Henri treated the heretics 
generally. The sovereign made a few excuses, which Guise 
heeded not ; on the contrary, he hastened to denounce the body of 
minions who polluted the palace. " Love me, love my dog," said 
Henri, in a hoarse voice. " Yes/' answered Guise, peering into 
the royal and unnaturally sparkling eyes, "provided he doesn't 
bite !" The two men stood revealed before each other ; and from 
that hour the struggle was deadly. Henri would not give away, 



THE FORTUNES OF A KNIGHTLY FAMILY. 243 

with reference to his Swiss guard ; and Guise, passing through 
Paris, with his sword unsheathed, awoke the eager spirit of revolt, 
and looked complacently on while the barricades were raised to 
impede the march of the execrable Calvinistic Archers of the 
Guard. The " King of Paris" earned a decisive victory ; but be- 
fore it was achieved, the King of France hurried, in an agony of 
cowardly affright, from his capital. He gazed for a moment on 
the city, as he departed, venting curses on its ingratitude ; for, said 
the fugitive Monarch, "I loved you better than I did my own 
wife ;" — which was indisputably true. 

Guise might now have ascended the throne, had he not been too 
circumspect. He deemed the royal cause lost, but he was satis- 
fied for the moment with ruling in the capital, as generalissimo. 
He stopped the King's couriers, and opened his letters. He con- 
fiscated the property of Huguenots, and sold the same for his own 
benefit, while he professed to care only for that of the Common- 
wealth. Finally, he declared that the disturbed condition of affairs 
should be regulated by a States- General, which he commanded 
rather than prayed Henri to summon to a meeting at Blois. The 
King consented ; and the 18th of October, 1588, was appointed 
for the opening. Guise entered the old town with his family, and 
a host of retainers, cased in armor, and bristling with steel. 
Henri had his mother Catherine at his side ; but there were also 
a few faithful and unscrupulous followers with him in the palace 
at Blois ; and as he looked on any of those who might happen to 
salute him in passing, the King smiled darkly, and Per curiam 
pastorem fell in murmured satisfaction from his lips. The satur- 
nine monarch became, all at once, cheerful in his outward bearing, 
even when Guise was so ruling the States as to make their pro- 
ceedings turn to the detriment of the monarchy. The Guise fac- 
tion became anxious for the safety of their leader, whose quarters 
were in the palace ; but when the King, in token of reconciliation 
begged the Duke to participate with him in the celebration of the 
Holy Sacrament, there was scarcely a man capable of interpreting 
the manner of the times, who did not feel assured that under such 
a solemn pledge of security, there lay concealed the very basest 
treachery. Guise, over-confident, scorned alike open warning and 
dark inuendoes. He was so strong, and his royal antagonist so 



244 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

weak, that he despised the idea of violence being used against him 
— especially as the keys of the palatial castle were in his keeping, 
as " Grand-Master" of the Court. 

The 23d of December had arrived. The King intimated that 
he should proceed early in the morning, soon after daybreak (but 
subsequently to holding a council, to which he summoned the 
Duke and Cardinal), to the shrine of Our Lady of Clery, some 
two miles distant ; and the keys of the gates were demanded, in 
order to let Henri have issue at his pleasure, but in reality to keep 
the Guises within, isolated from their friends without. Larchant, 
one of the Archers of the Guard, also waited upon the Duke, to 
pray him to intercede for himself and comrades with the King, in 
order to obtain for them an increase of pay. " We will do our- 
selves the honor," said Larchant, " to prefer our petition to your 
Highness, in the morning, in a body." This was a contrivance to 
prevent Guise from being surprised at seeing so many armed men 
together in the King's antechamber, before the council was sitting. 
Henri passed a sleepless night. His namesake of Guise, who had 
just sent his Duchess homeward, her approaching confinement be- 
ing expected, spent the whole of the same night in the apartments 
of the Countess de JNoirmoutier. 

He was seen coming thence, before dawn, gayly dressed, and 
proceeding to the Chapel of the Virgin, to perform his morning 
devotions. Long before this, the King was a-foot, visiting the 
select archers who had accepted the bloody mission of ridding the 
perplexed monarch of his importunate adversary. He posted 
them, altered the arrangements, reposted them, addressed them 
again and again on the lawfulness of their office, and had some 
trouble to suppress an enthusiasm which threatened to wake the 
Queen-mother, who slept below, and to excite the suspicion of the 
Guards in the vicinity. Staircase and hall, closet and arras, no 
coign of vantage but had its assassin ready to act, should his fel- 
lows have failed. 

Precisely at seven o'clock, Guise, attired in a light suit of gray 
satin, and followed by Pericart, his secretary, entered the council- 
chamber, where he found several members assembled ; among 
others, his younger brother, the " Bottle- Cardinal" de Guise. An 
hour passed without the appearance of any message from the 



THE FORTUNES OF A KNIGHTLY FAMILY. 245 

King, who was in an inner apartment, now half-frightened at the 
pale faces of his own confidants, and anon endeavoring to excite 
his own resolution, by attempts to encourage theirs. It was a long 
and weary hour for all parties. As it slowly passed away, Guise, 
he knew not wherefore, grew anxious. He complained of the 
cold, and heaped billets of wood upon the fire. He spoke of feel- 
ing sick, faint, and unnerved ; and from his silver sweetmeat-case 
he took a few bonbons, by way of breakfast. He subsequently 
asked for some Damascus raisins, and conserve of roses ; but 
these, when supplied to him did not relieve him of an unaccount- 
able nervousness, which was suddenly increased, when the eye 
next to the scar from which he derived his appellation of Le Bala- 
fre, began to be suffused with tears. He indignantly wiped away 
the unwelcome suffusion, and had quite recovered as Rivol, Sec- 
retary of State, entered, and requested him to attend on the King, 
who awaited him in his own chamber. 

Guise gayly flung his bonbonniere across the council-table, and 
laughingly bade the grave counsellors scramble for the scattered 
sweets. He started up, overturned his chair in so doing, drew his 
thin mantle around him, and with cap and gloves in hand, waved 
a farewell to the statesmen present. He passed through two 
rooms, and closely followed by various of the archers, reached the 
tapestried entrance to the King's cabinet. No one offered to raise 
the arras for him. Guise lifted his own right arm to help himself 
at the same time looking half-round at the archers who were near 
him. At that moment, a dagger was buried in his breast, up to 
the very hilt. The blow was delivered by Montsery, from behind. 
The Duke let fall his hand to the pommel of his sword, when one 
assassin clung to his legs, a second, also from behind, stabbed him 
in the neck ; while a third passed his weapon through the Duke's 
ribs. 

Guise's first cry was, " Ho, friends !" His second, as Sarine 
ran him through the lower part of the back, was, " Mercy, Jesus !" 
He struggled faintly across the chamber, bleeding from a dozen 
wounds, in every one of which sat death. The murderers hacked 
at him as he staggered, and wildly yet feebly fought. All paused 
for a moment, when he had reached the extreme end of the room, 



246 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

where he again attempted to raise his sword ; but in the act he 
rolled over, stone dead, at the foot of the bed of Henri III. 

At that moment the tapestry was raised, and the king, whisper- 
ing " Is it done ?" approached the body, moodily remarking as he 
gazed upon it, " He looks greater than he did when living." Upon 
the person of the duke was found a manuscript memorandum, in 
these words: — "To maintain a war in France, I should require 
700,000 livres per month." This memorandum served in the 
king's mind as a justification of the murder just committed by 
his orders. The body was then unceremoniously rolled up in the 
Turkey carpet on which it had fallen, was covered with quick 
lime, and flung into the Loire. Some maimed rites were pre- 
viously performed over it by Dourgin the royal chaplain, who 
could not mutter the De Profundis without a running and terrified 
commentary of "Christ! — the awful sight!" Guise's second 
cardinal-brother and the Archbishop of Lyons were murdered on 
the following day ; but the lesser victims were forgotten in the 
fate which had fallen upon the more illustrious, yet certainly more 
guilty personages. 

The widow of Guise, soon after the dread event, gave birth to 
a son, subsequently the Chevalier Louis de Guise. " The boy," 
said the bereaved lady, "came into the world with his hands 
clasped, as if praying for vengeance on the assassins of his father." 
Every male member of the family whom the king could reach 
was now subjected to arrest. The young heir of Balafre, Charles, 
now fourth Duke of Guise, was now placed in close restriction in 
the Castle of Tours, where, sleeping or waking, four living eyes 
unceasingly watched him — voire meme allant a la garderobe — 
but which eyes he managed to elude nevertheless. 

In the meantime Rome excommunicated the murderer of her 
champion. Paris put on mourning ; officials were placed in the 
street to strip and scourge even ladies who ventured to appear 
without some sign of sorrow. Wax effigies of the king were 
brought into the churches, and frantically stabbed by the priests 
at the altar. The priests then solemnly paraded the streets, chant- 
ing as they went, " May God extinguish the Valois !" 

The whole city broke into insurrection, and the brother of 
Guise, the Duke de Mayenne, placed himself at the head of the 



THE FORTUNES OF A KNIGHTLY FAMILY. 247 

"league," whose object was the deposing of the king, and the 
transferring of the crown to a child of Lorraine. In the contest 
which ensued, Valois and Navarre united against the Guisards, 
and carried victory with them wherever they raised their banners. 
The exultation of Henri III. was only mitigated by the repeated 
Papal summonses received by him to repair to Rome, and there 
answer for his crime. 

Henri of Navarre induced him to rather think of gaining Paris 
than of mollifying the Pope ; and he was so occupied when the 
double vengeance of the church and the house of Guise overtook 
him in the very moment of victory. 

The Duchess de Montpensier, sister of the slaughtered duke, 
had made no secret of her intentions to have public revenge for 
the deed privately committed, whereby she had lost a brother. 
There was precaution enough taken that she should not approach 
the royal army or the king's quarters ; but a woman and a priest 
rendered all precautions futile. The somewhat gay duchess was 
on unusually intimate terms with a young monk, named Jacques 
Clement. This good Brother was a fanatic zealot for his church, 
and a rather too ardent admirer of the duchess, who turned both 
sentiments to her own especial purpose. She whispered in his 
ears a promise, to secure the fulfilment of which, he received with 
furious haste, the knife which was placed in his hands by the 
handsomest woman in France. It is said that knife is still pre- 
served, a precious treasure, at Rome. 

However this may be, on the 1st of August, 1589, the young 
Brother, with a weapon hid in the folds of his monkish gaberdine, 
and with a letter in his hand, sought and obtained access to the 
king. He went straightforward to his butcher's work, and had 
scarcely passed beneath the roof of the royal tent before he 
had buried the steel deep in the monarch's bosom. He turned 
to fly with hot haste to the lady from whom he had received his 
commission ; but a dozen swords and pikes thrust life out of him 
ere he had made three steps in the direction of his promised 
recompence. 

She who had engaged herself to pay for the crime cared for 
neither victim. She screamed indeed, but it was with a hysteric 
joy that threatened to slay her, and which was only allayed by the 



248 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

thought that the last King of the Yalois race did not know that 
he had died by a dagger directed by a sister of Guise. 

In testimony of her 'exultation she distributed green scarfs, the 
color of Lorraine, to the people of Paris. She brought up from 
the provinces the mother of Clement, to whom was accorded the 
distinction of a triumphal entry. Priests and people worshipped 
the mother of the assassin as she passed wonderingly on her way ; 
and they blasphemously saluted her with the chanted words, 
" Blessed be the womb that bare him, aud the paps that gave him 
suck." She was led to the seat of honor at the table of Guise, 
and Rome sheltered the infamy of the assassin, and revealed its 
own, by pronouncing his work to be a god-like act. By authority 
of the Vatican, medals were struck in memory and honor of the 
dead ; but the Huguenots who read thereon the murderer's pro- 
fession and name — Frere Jacques Clement — ingeniously discov- 
ered therein the anagrammatic interpretation " C'est Venfer qui 
m'a cree"< — "It is hell that created me." 

The last Valois, with his last breath, had named the Protestant 
Henri of Xavarre as his legal successor to the throne ; but between 
Henri and his inheritance there stood Rome and the Guise faction. 
Then ensued the successive wars of the League, during which the 
heavy Mayenne suffered successive defeats at the hands of Henri of 
the snowy plume. TYliile the contest was raging, the people trusted 
to the pulpits for their intelligence from the scene of action. From 
those pulpits was daily uttered more mendacity in one hour than 
finds expression in all the horse-fairs of the United Kingdom in a 
year. When famine decimated those who lived within the walls, 
the people were reduced to live upon a paste made from human 
bones, and which they called "Madame de Montpensier's cake." 

Henri of Xavarre, their deliverer, did not arrive before the gates 
of Paris without trouble. In 1521, Charles of Guise, the young 
Duke, had escaped most gallantly, in open day, from the Castle of 
Tours, by sliding from the ramparts, down a rope, which simply 
blistered his hands and made a rent in his hose. He was speedi- 
ly accoutred and in the field, with Spain in his rear to help him. 
Now, he was making a dash at Henri's person ; and, anon, leaping 
from his camp-bed to escape him. At other times he was idle, 
while his uncle Mayenne pursued the cherished object of their 



THE FORTUNES OF A KNIGHTLY FAMILY. 249 

house — that crown which was receding from them more swiftly 
than ever. For the alert Bourbon, the slow and hard-drinking 
Mayenne was no match. The latter thought once to catch the 
former in his lady's bower, but the wakeful lover was gayly gallop- 
ing back to Ins quarters before the trumpets of Mayenne had 
sounded to " boot and saddle." " Mayenne," said the Pope, " sits 
longer at table than Henri lies in bed." 

The gates of Paris were open to Henri on the 21st of March, 
1591. Old Cardinal Pellevi died of disgust and indignation, on 
hearing of the fact. The Duchess of Montpensier, after tearing 
her hair, and threatening to swoon, prudently concluded, with 
Henry IV., not only her own peace, but that of her family. The 
chief members of the house of Guise were admitted into places of 
great trust, to the injury of more deserving individuals. The 
young Duke de Guise affected a superabundant loyalty. In re- 
turn, the King not only gave him the government of several chief 
towns, but out of compliment to him forbade the exercise of Prot- 
estant worship within the limits of the Duke's government ! Such 
conduct was natural to a King, who to secure his throne had 
abandoned his faith ; who lightly said that he had no cannon so 
powerful as the canon of the mass, and who was destitute of most 
virtues save courage and good-nature. The latter was abused by 
those on whom it was lavished ; and the various assaults upon his 
life were supposed to be directed by those very Guises, on whom 
he had showered places, pensions, and pardons, which they were 
constantly needing and continually deriding. 

The young Duke of Guise enjoyed, among other appointments, 
that of Governor of Marseilles. He was light-hearted, selfish, 
vain, and cruel. He hanged his own old partisans in the city, as 
enemies to the king ; and he made his name for ever infamous by 
the seduction of the beautiful and noble orphan-girl, Marcelle de 
Castellane, whom he afterward basely abandoned, and left to die 
of hunger. He sent her a few broad pieces by the hands of a 
lacquey ; but the tardy charity was spurned, and the poor victim 
died. He had little time to think of her at the brilliant court of 
the first Bourbon, where he and those of his house struggled to 
maintain a reputation which had now little to support it, but the 
memories of the past — and many of those were hardly worth ap- 



250 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

pealing to. He was a mere fine gentleman, bold withal, and there- 
with intriguing ; ever hoping that the fortunes of his house might 
once more turn and bring it near a throne, and in the meantime, 
making himself remarkable for his vanity, his airs of greatness, 
and his affectation. Brave as he was, he left his brothers, the 
cardinal and chevalier, to draw their swords and settle the quarrels 
which were constantly raging on disputed questions touching the 
assumed Majesty of the House of Guise. 

The streets of Paris formed the stage on which these bloody 
tragedies were played, but they, and all other pretensions, were 
suppressed by that irresistible putter-down of such nuisances — the 
Cardinal de Richelieu. He used the sword of Guise as long as it 
was needed, but when Charles became troublesome the Cardinal 
not only banished him, but wounded the pride of his family by 
placing garrisons in the hitherto sovereign duchy of Lorraine. 
"When Cardinal Fleury subsequently annexed Lorraine itself to 
the territory of France, the Guises thought the world was at an 
end. The universe, however, survived the shock. 

Duke Charles died in exile at Cune, near Sienne, in the year 
1640. Of his ten children by the Duchess de Joyeuse, he left five 
surviving. He was succeeded by Henri, the eldest, who was bishop 
and cardinal. He had been raised to the episcopate while yet in 
the arms of his wet-nurse ; and he was in frocks when on his long 
curis was placed the scarlet hat of a cardinal. He was twenty 
years of age when he became Duke of Guise. He at once flung 
away all he possessed of his religious profession — its dress and 
titles, and walked abroad, spurs on his heels, a plume in his cap, 
and a long sword and a bad heart between ! 

The whole life of this chivalrous scoundrel was a romance, no 
portion of which reflects any credit on the hero. He had scarcely 
reached the age of manhood, when he entered into a contract of 
marriage with the beautiful Anne of Gonzaga. He signed the 
compact, not in ink, but with his own blood, calling Heaven to 
witness, the while, that he would never address a vow to any other 
lady. The breath of perjury had scarcely passed his lips when he 
married the Countess of Bossu, and he immediately abandoned 
her to sun himself in the eyes of Mademoiselle de Pons — an im- 
perious mistress, who squandered the property he lavished on her, 



THE FORTUNES OF A KNIGHTLY FAMILY. 251 

and boxed the ex-cardinal's ears, when he attempted, with degra- 
ding humility, to remonstrate with her for bringing down ruin upon 
his estate. 

He was as disloyal to his King as to his " lady ;" he tampered 
with rebellion, was sentenced to death, and was pardoned. But a 
state of decent tranquillity agreed ill with his constitution. To 
keep that and his nerves from rustkig, he one day drew his sword 
in the street, upon the son of Coligny, whose presence seemed a 
reproach to him, and whom he slew on the spot. He wiped his 
bloody rapier on his mantle, and betook himself for a season to 
Rome, where he intrigued skilfully, but fruitlessly, in order to ob- 
tain the tiara for the brother of Mazarin. Apathy would now 
have descended upon him, but for a voice from the city of Naples, 
which made his swelling heart beat with a violence that almost 
threatened to kill. 

Masaniello had just concluded his brief and mad career. The 
Neapolitans were not, on that account, disposed to submit again to 
Spain. They were casting about for a King, when Guise present- 
ed himself. This was in the year 1 647. He left France in a frail 
felucca, with a score of bold adventurers wearing the colors of 
Lorraine, intertwined with " buff," in compliment to the Duke's 
mistress. The Church blessed the enterprise. The skiff sped 
unharmed through howling storms and thundering Spanish fleets ; 
and when the Duke stepped ashore at Naples, and mounted a 
charger, the shouting populace who preceded him, burnt incense 
before the new-comer, as if he had been a coming god. 

For love and bravery, this Guise was unequalled. He con- 
quered all his foes, and made vows to all the ladies. In love he 
lost, however, all the fruits of bravery. Naples was but a mock 
Sardanapalian court, when the Spaniards at length mustered 
strongly enough to attack the new, bold, but enervated King. 
They took him captive, and held him, during four years, a prisoner 
in Spain. He gained liberty by a double lie, the common coin of 
Guise. He promised to reveal to the Court of Madrid the secrets 
of the Court of Paris ; and bound himself by bond and oath never 
to renew his attempt on Naples. His double knavery, however, 
brought him no profit. At length, fortune seeming to disregard 
the greatness of his once highly-favored house, this restless repro- 



252 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

bate gradually sunk into a mere court beau, passing his time in 
powdering his peruke, defaming reputations, and paying profane 
praise to the patched and painted* ladies of the palace. He died 
before old age, like most of the princes of his house : and in his 
fiftieth year this childless man left his dignity and an evil name to 
his nephew, Louis Joseph. 

The sixth Duke bore his greatness meekly and briefly. He 
was a kind-hearted gentleman, whose career of unobtrusive useful- 
ness was cut short by small-pox in 1671. When he died, there 
lay in the next chamber an infant in the cradle. This was his little 
son Joseph, not yet twelve months old, and all unconscious of his 
loss, in a father ; or of his gain, in a somewhat dilapidated coronet. 
On his young brow that symbol of his earthly rank rested during 
only four years. The little Noble then fell a victim to the disease 
which had carried off his sire, and made of himself a Duke — the 
last, the youngest, the most innocent, and the happiest of the race. 

During a greater portion of the career of the Dukes, priest and 
swordsman in the family had stood side by side, each menacing to 
the throne ; the one in knightly armor, the other in the dread pan- 
oply of the Church. Of the seven ducal chieftains of the house, 
there is only one who can be said to have left behind him a repu- 
tation for harmlessness ; and perhaps that was because he lived at 
a time when he had not the power to be offensive. The boy on 
the mule, in 1506, and the child in the cradle, in 1676, are two 
pleasant extremes of a line where all between is, indeed, fearfully 
attractive, but of that quality also which might make not only men 
but angels weep. 

It must be confessed that the Dukes of Guise played for a high 
prize ; and lost it. More than once, however, they were on the 
very point of grasping the attractive but delusive prize. If they 
were so near triumph, it was chiefly through the co-operation of 
their respective brothers, the proud and able Cardinals. The 
Dukes were representatives of brute force ; the Cardinals, of that 
which is far stronger, power of intellect. The former often spoiled 
their cause by being demonstrative. The latter never trusted to 
words when silver served their purpose equally well. When they 
did speak, it was with effective brevity. We read of a Lacede- 
monian who was fined for employing three words to express what 



THE FORTUNES OP A KNIGHTLY FAMILY. 253 

might have been as effectually stated in two- No churchman of 
the house of Guise ever committed the fault of the Lacedemonian. 

Cardinal John of Lorraine was the brother of the first Duke 
Claude. When the latter was a boy, riding his mule into France, 
John was the young Bishop-coadjutor of Metz. He was little 
more than two years old when he was first appointed to this re- 
sponsible office. He was a Cardinal before he was out of his 
teens ; and in his own person was possessed of twelve bishoprics 
and archbishoprics. Of these, however, he modestly retained but 
three, namely, Toul, Narbonne, and Alby — as they alone hap- 
pened to return revenues worth acceptance. Not that he was 
selfish, seeing that he subsequently applied for, and received the 
Archbishopric of Rheims, which he kindly held for his nephew 
Charles, who was titular thereof, at the experienced age of ten. 
His revenues were enormous, and he was for ever in debt. He 
was one of the most skilful negotiators of his time ; but whether 
deputed to emperor or pope, he was seldom able to commence his 
journey until he had put in pledge three or four towns, in order 
to raise money to defray his expenses. His zeal for what he un- 
derstood as religion was manifested during the short but bloody 
campaign against the Protestants of Alsatia, where he accompa- 
nied his brother. At the side of the Cardinal, on the field of 
battle, stood the Apostolic Commissary, and a staff of priestly 
aides-de-camp. While some of these encouraged the orthodox 
troops to charge the Huguenots, the principal personages kept 
their hands raised to Heaven ; and when the pennons of the army 
of Reformers had all gone down before the double cross of Lor- 
raine, the Cardinal and his ecclesiastical staff rode to the church 
of St. Nicholas and sang Te Deum laudamus. 

The chivalrous Cardinal was another man in his residence of 
the Hotel de Cluny. Of this monastery he made a mansion, in 
which a Sybarite might have dwelt without complaining. It was 
embellished, decorated, and furnished with a gorgeousness that had 
its source at once in his blind prodigality, his taste for the arts, 
and his familiar patronage of artists. The only thing not to be 
found in. this celebrated mansion was the example of a good life. 
But how could this example be found in a prelate who assumed 
and executed the office of instructing the maids of honor in their 



254 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

delicate duties. Do Thou says it was an occupation for which he 
was pre-eminently fitted ; and Brantome pauses, in his gay illus- 
trations of the truth of this assertion, to remark with indignation, 
that if the daughters of noble houses arrived at court, endowed 
with every maiden virtue, Cardinal John was the man to despoil 
them of their dowry. 

He was, nevertheless, not deficient in tastes and pursuits of a 
refined nature. He was learned himself, aud he loved learning 
in others. His purse, when there was anything in it, was at the ' 
service of poor scholars and of sages with great purposes in view. 
He who deemed the slaughter of Protestant peasants a thing to 
thank God for, had something like a heart for clever sneerers at 
Papistry and also for Protestants of talent. Thus he pleaded the 
cause of the amphibious Erasmus, extended his protection to the 
evangelical Clement Marot, and laughed and drank with Rabelais, 
the caustic cure of Meudon. He was, moreover, the boon com- 
panion of Francis L, a man far less worthy of his intimacy than 
the equivocating Erasmus, the gentle Marot, or roystering Rabe- 
lais, who painted the manners of the court and church of his day, 
in his compound characters of Gargantua and Panurge. 

He was a liberal giver, but he gave with an ostentation for 
which there is no warrant in the gospel. At one period of his 
life he walked abroad with a game-bag full of crowns slung from 
his neck. On passing beggars he bestowed, without counting, a 
rich alms, requesting prayers in return. He was known as the 
" game-bag Cardinal." On one occasion, when giving largesse to 
a blind mendicant in Rome, the latter was so astonished at the 
amount of the gift, that, pointing to the giver, he exclaimed, " If 
thou art not Jesus Christ, thou art John of Lorraine." 

He was bold in his gallantry. When sent by Francis I. to 
negotiate some political business with the pope, he passed through 
Piedmont, where he was for a while the guest of the Duke and 
Duchess of Savoy. The duchess, on the cardinal being presented, 
gravely offered her hand (she was a Portuguese princess) to be 
kissed. John of Lorraine, however, would not stoop so low, and 
made for her lips. A struggle ensued, which was maintained with 
rude persistance on one side, and with haughty and offended vigor 
on the other, until her highness's head, being firmly grasped within 



THE FORTUNES OF A KNIGHTLY FAMILY. 255 

his eminence's arm, the cardinal kissed the ruffled princess two or 
three times on the mouth, and then, with an exultant laugh, re- 
leased her. 

The second cardinal of this branch, Charles of Lorraine, was 
brother of the second duke. He was the greatest man of his 
family, and the most powerful of his age. His ambition was to 
administer the finances of France, and he did so during three 
reigns, with an annual excess of expenditure over income, of two 
millions and a half. He was rather dishonest than incapable. 
His enemies threatened to make him account ; he silenced them 
with the sound of the tocsin of St. Bartholomew, and when the 
slaughter was over he merrily asked for the presence of the ac- 
cusers who had intended to make him refund. 

He was an accomplished hypocrite, and at heart a religious 
reformer. At last he acknowledged to the leaders of the reform- 
atory movement, whom he admitted to his familiarity, that the 
Reformation was necessary and warrantable ; and yet policy made 
of him the most savage enemy that Protestantism ever had in 
France. He urged on the king to burn noble heretics rather than 
the common people ; and when Henri was touched with compas- 
sion, in his dying moments, for some Protestant prisoners capitally 
condemned, the cardinal told him that the feeling came of the 
devil, and that it was better they should perish. And they 
perished. 

He introduced the Inquisition into France, and was made Grand 
Inquisitor at the moment the country was rejoicing for the recov- 
ery of Calais from the English. And this was the man who, at 
the Council of Trent, advocated the celebration of divine worship 
in the vernacular tongue. He was the friend of liberty to the 
Gallican church, but he took the other side on finding that liberal 
advocacy periled his chances of being pope. The living pope 
used and abused him. " I am scandalized," said his holiness, " at 
finding you still in the enjoyment of the revenues of so many 
sees." " I would resign them all," said the cardinal, " for a single 
bishopric." " Which bishopric ?" asked the pope. " Marry !" 
exclaimed Cardinal Charles, " the bishopric of Rome." 

He was as haughty as he was aspiring. The Guise had induced 
the weak Anthony of Navarre to turn Romanist ; but the cardinal 



256 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

did not treat that king with more courtesy on that account. One 
frosty morning, not only did the princely priest keep the mountain 
king tarrying at his garden gate for an audience, but when he 
went down to his majesty, he listened, all befurred as he was' to 
the shivering monarch who humbly preferred his suit, cap in hand. 

He was covetous and haughty, but he sometimes found his 
match. His niece, Mary Stuart, had quarreled with Catherine 
de Medicis, whose especial wrath had been excited by Mary's 
phrase applied to Catherine, of " The Florentine tradeswoman." 
The Scottish Queen resolved, after this quarrel, to repair to the 
North. The cardinal was at her side when she was examining 
her jewels, previously to their being packed up. He tenderly 
remarked that the sea was dangerous, the jewels costly, and that 
his niece could not do better than leave them in his keeping. 
" Good uncle," said the vivacious Mary, " I and my jewels travel 
together. If I trust one to the sea, I may the other ; and there- 
with, adieu !" The cardinal bit his lips and blessed her. 

Ranke is puzzled where to find the principal author of the mas- 
sacre of St. Bartholomew. There is no difficulty in the matter. 
The Guises had appealed to the chances of battle to overcome 
their chief adversaries in the kingdom. But for every Huguenot 
father slain, there arose as many filial avengers as he had sons. 
The causes of quarrel were individual as well as general. A Hu- 
guenot had slain the second Duke, and his widow was determined 
to be avenged. The Cardinal was wroth with the King for re- 
taining Protestant archers in his body-guard. The archers took 
an unclean vengeance, and defiled the pulpit in the Chapel Royal, 
wherefrom the Cardinal was accustomed to denounce the doctrine 
of their teachers. His Eminence formed the confederacy by 
which it was resolved to destroy the enemy at a blow. To the 
general causes, I need not allude. The plot itself was formed in 
Oliver Clisson's house, in Paris, known as " the Hotel of Mercy." 
But the representatives of Rome and Spain, united with those of 
France, met upon the frontier, and there made the final arrange- 
ments which were followed by such terrible consequences. When 
the stupendous deed was being done, the Cardinal was absent from 
France ; but he fairly took upon himself the guilt, when he confer- 
red the hand of his illegitimate daughter Anne d'Arne on the 



THE FORTUNES OF A KNIGHTLY FAMILY. 257 

officer Besme whose dagger had given the first mortal stab to 
Coligny, the chief of the immolated victims of that dreadful day — 
and Rome approved. 

As a public controversialist he shone in his dispute with Beza. 
Of his pride, we have an illustration in what is recorded of him in 
the Council of Trent. The Spanish embassador had taken a place, 
at mass, above that of the embassador from France. Thereupon, 
the reverend Cardinal raised such a commotion in the cathedral, 
and dwelt so loudly and strongly in expletives, that divine worship 
was suspended, and the congregation broke up in most admired 
disorder. 

So at the coronation, in the Abbey of St. Dennis, of the Queen 
of Charles IX. The poor, frail, Austrian Princess Elizabeth, 
after being for hours on her knees, declared her incapacity for re- 
maining any longer without some material support from food or 
wine. The Cardinal declared that such an irreligious innovation 
was not to be thought of. He stoutly opposed, well-fed man that 
he was, the supplying of any refreshment to the sinking Queen ; 
and it was only when he reflected that her life might be imperiled 
that he consented to "the smallest quantity of something very 
light," being administered to her. 

He was the only man of his family who was not possessed of the 
knightly virtue of bravery. He was greatly afraid of being as- 
sassinated. In council, he was uncourteous. Thus, he once ac- 
cused the famous Chancellor le Hospital of wishing to be "the cock 
of the assembly," and when the grave chancellor protested against 
such language, the Cardinal qualified him as " an old ram." It 
may be added that, if he feared the dagger directed by private 
vengeance, he believed himself protected by the guardianship of 
Heaven, which more than once, as he averred, carried him off in 
clouds and thunder, when assassins were seeking him. He was 
wily enough to have said this, in order to deter all attempts at vio- 
lence directed against himself. 

He died edifyingly, kissed Catherine de Medicis, and was be- 
lieved by the latter, to mysteriously haunt her, long after his 
death. The real footing on which these two personages stood 
has yet to be discovered by curious inquiries. 

The Cardinal-brother of the third Duke, Louis of Lorraine, 
17 



258 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

loved good living, and was enabled at an early age to indulge his 
propensities, out of the rich revenues which he derived from his 
numerous ecclesiastical preferments. He held half a dozen ab- 
beys while he was yet in his cradle ; and he was a bishop at the 
mature age of eighteen. Just before his death, in 1598, when he 
was about fifty years of age, he resigned his magnificent church 
appointments, in favor of his nephew and namesake, who was to 
be a future Cardinal at the side of the fourth Duke. Louis was 
a man of ability and of wit. He chose a device for his own 
shield of arms. It consisted of nine zeros, with this apt motto : 
" Hoc per se nihil est ; sed si minimum addideris, maximum erit," 
intending, it is said, to imply that man Avas nothing till grace was 
given him. He was kindly-dispositioned, loved his ease, was 
proud of his church, and had a passion for the bottle. That 
was his religion. His private life was not marked by worse 
traits than those that characterized Ins kinsmen in the priest- 
hood. He showed his affection for his mother after a truly filial 
fashion, bequeathing to her all his estates, in trust, to pay his 
debts. 

The third duke had a second cardinal-brother, known as the 
Cardinal de Guise, who was murdered by Henri III. He was 
an intriguer ; but as brave as any knight of his family. It was 
long before the king could find men willing to strike a priest ; and 
when they were found, they approached him again and again, be- 
fore they could summon nerve wherewith to smite him. After all, 
this second murder at Blois was effected by stratagem. The car- 
dinal was requested to accompany a messenger to the royal 
presence. He complied with some misgiving, but when he found 
himself in a dark corridor with four frowning soldiers, he under- 
stood his doom ; requested a few moments respite to collect his 
thoughts ; and then, enveloping his head in his outer robe, bade 
them execute their bloody commission. He was instantly slain, 
without offering resistance, or uttering a word. 

This cardinal was father of five illegitimate sons, of whom the 
most celebrated was the Baron of Ancerville, or, as he proudly 
designated himself, " Bastard of Guise." 

By the side of the son of Balafre, Charles, the fourth duke, 
there stood the last cardinal-brother who was able to serve his 



THE FORTUNES OF A KNIGHTLY FAMILY. 259 

house, and whose character presents any circumstance of note. 
This cardinal, if he loved anything more than the bottle, was 
fondest of a battle. He characteristically lost his life by both. 
He was present at the siege of St. Jean d'Angely, held by the 
Protestants in the year 1621. It was on the 20th of May; and 
the sun was shining with a power not known to our severe springs. 
The cardinal fought like a fiend, and swore with more than fiend- 
ish capacity. The time was high noon, and he himself was in the 
noontide of his wondrous vigor, some thirty years of age. He 
was laying about him in the bloody melee which occurred in the 
suburb, when he paused for awhile, panting for breath and stream- 
ing with perspiration. He called for a flask of red wine, which 
he had scarcely quaffed when he was seized with raging fever, 
which carried him off within a fortnight. He was so much more 
addicted to knightly than to priestly pursuits, that, at the time of 
his death, a negotiation was being carried on to procure from the 
pope permission for the cardinal to give up to his lay-brother, the 
Due de Chevreuse, all his benefices, and to receive in return the 
duke's governorship of Auvergne. He was for ever in the saddle, 
and never more happy than when he saw another before him with 
a resolute foe firmly seated therein. He lived the life of a soldier 
of fortune, or knight-errant ; and when peace temporarily reigned, 
he rode over the country with a band of followers, in search of 
adventures, and always found them at the point of their swords. 
He left the altar to draw on his boots, gird his sword to his hip, 
and provoke his cousin De Nevers to a duel, by striking him in 
the face. The indignant young noble regretted that the profession 
of his insulter covered the latter with impunity, and recommended 
him, at the same time, to abandon it, and to give De Nevers satis- 
faction. " To the devil I have sent it already !" said the exem- 
plary cardinal, " when I flung off my frock, and belted on my 
sword :" and the two kinsmen would have had their weapons in 
each other's throat, but for the royal officers, who checked their 
Christian amusement. 

This roystering cardinal, who was interred with more pomp 
than if he had been a great saint, or a merely honest man, left 
five children. Their mother was Charlotte des Escar. They 
were recognised as legitimate, on allegation that their parents 



260 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

had been duly married, on papal dispensation. He was the 
last of the cardinals, and was as good a soldier as any of the 
knights. 

Neither the pride nor the pretensions of the house expired with 
either Dukes or Cardinals. There were members of the family 
whose arrogance was all the greater because they were not of the 
direct line of succession. Their great ambition in little things was 
satisfied with the privilege granted to the ladies of Guise, namely, 
the one which they held in common with royal princesses, at being 
presented at court previous to their marriage. This ambition 
gained for them, however, the hatred of the nobles and the princes 
of the Church, and at length caused a miniature insurrection in 
the palace at Versailles. 

The occasion was the grand ball given in honor of the nuptials 
of Marie Antoinette and the Dauphin. Louis XV. had announced 
that he would open the brilliant scene by dancing a minuet with 
Mile, de Lorraine, sister of the Prince de Lambesc. The uproar 
that ensued was terrific. The entire body of nobility protested 
against such marked precedence being allowed to the lady in ques- 
tion. The Archbishop of Rheims placed himself at the head of 
the opposing movement ; and, assembling the indignant peerage, 
this successor of the Apostles, in company with his episcopal broth- 
er from Noyon, came to the solemnly important resolution, that 
between the princes of the blood-royal and haute noblesse there 
could be no intermediate rank ; and that Mile, de Lorraine, con- 
sequently, could not take precedence of the female members of the 
aristocracy, who had been presented. A memorial was drawn up. 
The entire nobility, old and new, signed it eagerly ; and the King 
was informed that if he did not rescind his determination, no lady 
would dance at the ball after the minuet in question had been per- 
formed. The King exerted himself to overcome the opposition : 
but neither bishops nor baronesses would give way. The latter, 
on the evening of the ball, walked about the grand apartments in 
undress, expressed loudly their resolution not to dance, and re- 
ceived archiepiscopal benison for their pious obstinacy. The mat- 
ter was finally arranged by compromise, whereby the Dauphin and 
the Count dArtois were to select partners among the nobility, and 
not, as was de rigueur, according to the law of minuets, among 



THE FORTUNES OF A KNIGHTLY FAMILY. 261 

princesses of their own rank. The hour for opening the famous 
ball was retarded in order to give the female insurrectionists time 
to dress, and ultimately all went off a merveille I 

With the Prince de Lambesc above-named, the race of Guise 
disappeared altogether from the soil of France. He was colonel 
of the cavalry regiment, Royal Allemand, which in 1789 came 
into collision with the people. The Prince was engaged, with his 
men, in dispersing a seditious mob. He struck one of the most 
conspicuous of the rioters with the flat of his sword. This blow, 
dealt by a Guise, was the first given in the great Revolution, and 
it helped to deprive Louis XVI. of his crown. The Prince de 
Lambesc was compelled to fly from the country, to escape the in- 
dignation of the people. Nearly three centuries before, his great 
ancestor, the boy of the mule, had entered the kingdom, and found- 
ed a family which increased in numbers and power against the 
throne, and against civil and religious liberty. And now, the sole 
survivor of the many who had sprung from this branch of Lor- 
raine, as proud, too, as the greatest of his house, having raised his 
finger against the freedom of the mob, was driven into exile, to 
seek refuge for a time, and a grave for age, on the banks of the 
distant Danube. 

When Cardinal Fleury annexed the Duchy of Lorraine to 
France, it was by arrangement with Austria; according to which, 
Francis, Duke of Lorraine, received in exchange for his Duchy, 
the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and the hand of Maria Theresa. 
Their heirs form the imperial house of Hapsburgh-Lorraine. 
Such of my readers as have visited Nancy, the capital of old Lor- 
raine, will remember there the round chapel near what is left of 
the old palace of the old Dukes. This chapel contains the tombs 
of the principal of the twenty-nine Dukes who ruled sovereignly 
in Lorraine. The expense of supporting the service and fabric, 
altar and priests, connected with this chapel, is sustained entirely 
by Austria. It is the only remnant preserved of the Lorraine 
sovereignty of the olden time. The priests and employes in the 
edifice speak of Hapsburgh-Lorraine as their house, to which they 
owe exclusive homage. When I heard expression given to this 
sentiment, I was standing in front of the tomb of that famous 
etcher, old Jean Callot. The latter was a native of Nancy ; and 



262 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

I could almost fancy that his merry-looking lip curled with scorn 
at the display of this rag of pride in behalf of the house of Lor- 
raine. 

"With the story of part of that house I fear I may have detained 
the reader too long. I will tell more briefly the shifting fortunes 
of a material house, the knightly edifice of Rambouillet. 



THE RECORD OF RaMBOUILLET. 263 



THE RECORD OF RAMBOUILLET. 

"Imagine that this castle were your court, 
And that you lay, for pleasure, here a space, 
Not of compulsion or necessity." — Kit Marlowe. 

Rambouillet is an old chateau where feudal knights once 
lived like little kings. In its gardens Euphuism reigned supreme. 
It is a palace, in whose chambers monarchs have feasted, and at 
w T hose gates they have asked, when fugitives, for water and a crust 
of bread. It commenced its career as a cradle of knights ; it is 
finishing it as an asylum for the orphan children of warriors. The 
commencement and finale are not unworthy of one another ; but, 
between the two, there have been some less appropriate disposals 
of this old chevalier's residence. For a short period it was some- 
thing between Hampton Court and Rosherville. In the very place 
where the canons of the Sainte Chapelle were privileged to kiss 
the cheeks of the Duchess of Burgundy, the denizens of the Fau- 
bourg St. Antoine could revel, if they could only pay for their 
sport. "Where the knightly D'Amaurys held their feudal state, 
where King Francis followed the chase, and the Chevalier Florian 
sang, and Penthievre earned immortality by the practice of heav- 
enly virtues ; where Louis enthroned Du Barry, and Napoleon 
presided over councils, holding the destiny of thrones in the balance 
of his will, there the sorriest mechanic had, with a few francs in 
his hand, the right of entrance. The gayest lorettes of the capital 
smoked their cigarettes w T here Julie D'Angennes fenced with love : 
and the bower of queens and the refuge of an empress rang with 
echoes, born of light-heartedness and lighter wine. Louis Napo- 
leon has, however, established a better order of things. 

To a Norman chief, of knightly character, if not of knightly 



264 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

title, and to the Norman tongue, JRaboufflet, as it used to be 
written, or the " Rabbit warren," owes the name given to the 
palace, about thirteen leagues from Paris, and to the village which 
clusters around it. The former is now a quaint and confused pile, 
the chief tower of which alone is now older than the days of 
Hugues Capet. Some authors describe the range of buildings as 
taking the form of a horseshoe ; but the hoof would be indescri- 
bable to which a shoe so shaped could be fittingly applied. The 
changes and additions have been as much without end as without 
taste. In its present architectural entirety it wears as motley an 
aspect as Cceur de Lion might, were he to walk down Pall Mall 
with a modern paletot over his suit of complete steel. 

The early masters of Rambouillet were a knightly, powerful 
but uninteresting race. It is sufficient to record of the chivalric 
D'Amaurys that they held it, to the satisfaction of few people but 
themselves, from 1003 to 1317. Further record these sainted 
proprietors require not. We will let them sleep on undisturbedly, 
their arms crossed on their breast, in the peace of a well-merited 
oblivion. JRequiescat ! 

One relic of the knightly days, however, survived to the period 
of the first French Revolution. In the domain of Rambouillet 
was the fief of Montorgueil. It was held by the prior of St. 
Thomas d'Epernon, on the following service : the good prior was 
bound to present himself yearly at the gate of Rambouillet, bare- 
headed, with a garland on his brow, and mounted on a piebald 
horse, touching whom it was bad service if the animal had not 
four white feet. 

The prior, fully armed like a knight, save that his white gloves 
were of a delicate texture, carried a flask of wine at his saddle- 
bow. In one hand he held a cake, to the making of which had 
gone a bushel of flour — an equal measure of wheat was also the 
fee of the lord. The officers of the latter examined narrowly into 
the completeness of the service. If they pronounced it imperfect 
the prior of Epernon was mulcted of the revenues of his fief for 
the year ensuing. 

In later days the ceremony lost much of its meaning ; but down 
to the period of its extinction, the wine, the cake, and the garland, 
were never wanting ; and the maidens of Rambouillet were said 



THE RECORD OF RAMBOUILLET. 265 

to be more exacting than the baronial knights themselves, from 
whom many of them were descended. The festival was ever a 
joyous one, as became a feudal lord, whose kitchen fireplace was 
of such dimensions that a horseman might ride into it, and skim 
the pot as he stood in his stirrups. 

It is a singular thing that scarcely a monarch has had anything 
to do with the knightly residence of Rambouillet, but mischance 
has befallen him. The kings were unjust to the knights, and the 
latter found for the former a Nemesis. Francis I. was hunting in 
the woods of Rambouillet when he received the news of the death 
of Henry VIII. that knight-sovereign, with whom he had strug- 
gled on the Field of the Cloth of Gold. With the news, he re- 
ceived a shock, which the decay sprung from various excesses 
could not resist. He entered the chateau as the guest of the 
Chevalier d'Angennes, in whose family the proprietorship then 
resided. The chamber is still shown wherein he died, roaring 
in agony, and leaving proof of its power over him, in the 
pillow, which, in mingled rage and pain, he tore into strips with 
his teeth. 

The French author, Leon Gozlau, has given a full account of 
the extraordinary ceremonies which took place in honor of Fran- 
cis after his death. In front of the bed on which lay the body of 
the king, says M. Gozlau, "was erected an altar covered with 
embroidered cloth ; on this stood two gold candlesticks, bearing 
two lights from candles of the whitest wax. The cardinals, pre- 
lates, knights, gentlemen, and officers, whose duty it was to keep 
watch, were stationed around the catafalque, seated on chairs of 
cloth of gold. During the eleven days that the ceremony lasted, 
the strictest etiquette of service was observed about the king, as 
if he had been a living monarch in presence of his court. His 
table was regularly laid out for dinner, by the side of his bed. 
A cardinal blessed the food. A gentleman in waiting presented 
the ewer to the figure of the dead king. A knight offered him 
the cup mantling with wine : and another wiped his lips and fingers. 
These functions, with many others, took place by the solemn and 
subdued light of the funeral torches." 

The after ceremonies were quite as curious and extraordinarily 
magnificent ; but it is unnecessary to rest upon them. A king, in 



266 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

not much better circumstances than Francis, just before his death, 
slept in the castle for one night in the year 1588. It was a night 
in May, and the knight proprietor Jean d'Angennes, was celebra- 
ting the marriage of his daughter. The ceremony was interrupted 
by a loud knocking at the castle gates. The wary Jean looked 
first at the clamorous visitors through the wicket, whence he de- 
scried Henri III. flurried, yet laughing, seated in an old carriage, 
around which mustered dusty horsemen, grave cavaliers, and cour- 
tiers scantily attired. Some had their points untrussed, and many 
a knight was without his boots. An illustrious company, in fact ; 
but there were not two nobles in their united purses. Jean threw 
open his portals to a king and his knights flying from De Guise. 
The latter had got possession of Paris, and Henri and his friends 
had escaped in order to establish the regal authority at Chartres. 
The two great adversaries met at Blois : and after the assassina- 
tion of Guise, the king, with his knights and courtiers, gallopped 
gayly past Rambouillet on his return to Paris, to profit by his 
own wickedness, and the folly of his trusty and well-beloved cousin, 
the duke. 

Not long before this murder was committed, in 1588, the Hotel 
Pisani in Paris was made jubilant by the birth of that Catherine 
de Yivonnes, who was at once both lovely and learned. She lived 
to found that school of lingual purists whose doings are so pleas- 
antly caricatured in the Precieuses Ridicules of Moliere. Cathe- 
rine espoused that noble chevalier, Charles d'Angennes, Lord of 
Rambouillet, who was made a marquis for her sake. The cheva- 
lier's lady looked upon marriage rather as a closing act of life than 
otherwise ; but then hers had been a busy youth. In her second 
lustre she knew as many languages as a lustrum has years. Ere 
lier fourth had expired, her refined spirit and her active intellect 
were disgusted and weary with the continual sameness and the 
golden emptiness of the court. She cared little to render homage 
to a most Christian king who disregarded the precepts of Chris- 
tianity ; or to be sullied by homage from a monarch, which could 
not be rendered without insult to a virtuous woman. Young 
Catherine preferred, in the summer eve, to lie under the shadow 
of her father's trees, which once reared a world of leafy splendor 
on the spot now occupied by the Palais Royal. There she read 



THE RECORD OF RAMBOUILLET. 267 

works coined by great minds. During the long winter evenings 
she lay in stately ceremony upon her bed, an unseemly custom of 
the period, and there, surrounded by chevaliers, wits, and philoso- 
phers, enjoyed and encouraged the " cudgelling of brains." At 
her suggestion the old hotel was destroyed, and after her designs 
a new one built ; and when, in place of the old dark panelling, ob- 
scurely seen by casements that kept out the light, she covered the 
walls of her reception-rooms with sky-blue velvet, and welcomed 
the sun to shine upon them, universal France admiringly pro- 
nounced her mad, incontinently caught the infection, and broke out 
into an incurable disease of fancy and good taste. 

The fruit of the union above spoken of was abundant, but the 
very jewel in that crown of children, the goodliest arrow in the 
family quiver, was that Julie d'Angennes who shattered the hearts 
of all the amorous chevaliers of France, and whose fame has, per- 
haps, eclipsed that of her mother. Her childhood was passed at 
the feet of the most eminent men in France ; not merely aristo- 
cratic knights, but as eminent wits and philosophers. By the side 
of her cradle, Balzac enunciated his polished periods, and Marot 
liis tuneful rhymes, Voiture his conceits, and Vaugelas his learn- 
ing. She lay in the arms of Armand Duplessis, then almost as 
innocent as the little angel who unconsciously smiled on that future 
ruthless Cardinal de Richelieu ; and her young ear heard the ele- 
vated measure of Corneille's " Melite." To enumerate the circles 
which was wont to assemble within the H6tel Rambouillet in Paris, 
or to loiter in the gardens and hills of the country chateau, whose 
history I am sketching, would occupy more space than can be de- 
voted to such purpose. The circle comprised parties who were 
hitherto respectively exclusive. Knights met citizen wits, to the 
great edification of the former ; and Rambouillet afforded an asylum 
to the persecuted of all parties. They who resisted Henry IV. 
found refuge within its hospitable walls, and many nobles and chev- 
aliers who survived the bloody oppression of Richelieu, sought 
therein solace, and balm for their lacerated souls. 

Above all, Madame de Rambouillet effected the social congre- 
gation of the two sexes. Women were brought to encounter male 
wits, sometimes to conquer, always to improve them. The title to 
enter was, worth joined with ability. The etiquette was pedanti- 



268 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

cally strict, as may be imagined by the case of Voiture, who, on 
one occasion, after conducting Julie through a suite of rooms, kissed 
her hand on parting from her, and was very near being expelled 
for ever from Rambouillet, as the reward of his temerity. Voiture 
subsequently went to Africa. On his return, he was not admitted 
to the illustrious circle, but on condition that he narrated his ad- 
ventures, and to these the delighted assembly listened, all attired 
as gods and goddesses, and gravely addressing each other as such. 
Madame de Rambouillet presided over all as Diana, and the com- 
pany did her abundant homage. This, it is true, was for the 
nonce ; but there was a permanent travesty notwithstanding. It 
was the weak point of this assembly that not only was every mem- 
ber of it called by a feigned, generally a Greek, name, but the 
same rule was applied to most men and things beyond it ; nay, the 
very oaths, for there were little expletives occasionally fired off in 
ecstatic moments, were all by the heathen gods. Thus, as a sam- 
ple, France was Greece. Paris was Athens ; and the Place Roy- 
ale was only known at Rambouillet as the Place Dorique. The 
name of Madame de Rambouillet was Arthemise ; that of Made- 
moiselle de Scudery was Aganippe ; and Thessalonica was the 
purified cognomen of the Duchess de Tremouille. But out of 
such childishness resulted great good, notwithstanding that Moliere 
laughed, and that the Academie derided Corneille and all others 
of the innovating coterie. The times were coarse ; things, what- 
ever they might be, were called by their names ; ears polite expe- 
rienced offence, and at Rambouillet periphrasis was called upon to 
express what the language otherwise conveyed offensively by the 
medium of a single word. The idea was good, although it was 
abused. Of its quality some conjecture may be formed by one or 
two brief examples ; and I may add, by the way, that the French 
Academy ended by adopting many of the terms which it at first 
refused to acknowledge. Popularity had been given to much of 
the remainder, and thus a great portion of the vocabulary of Ram- 
bouillet has become idiomatic French. "Modeste," "friponne," 
and " secrete," were names given to the under-garments of ladies, 
which we now should not be afraid to specify. The sun was the 
" amiable illuminator ;" to " fulfil the desire which the chair had to 
embrace you," was simply to " sit down." Horses were " plushed 



THE RECORD OF RAMBOUILLET. 269 

coursers ;" a carriage was " four cornices," and chairmen were 
"baptized mules." A bed was the "old dreamer;" a hat, the 
" buckler against weather ;" to laugh was to " lose your gravity ;" 
dinner was the " meridional necessity ;" the ear was the " organ, 
or the gate of hearing ;" and the " throne of modesty" was the pol- 
ished phrase for a fair young cheek. There is nothing very edify- 
ing in all this, it is true ; but the fashion set people thinking, and 
good ensued. Old indelicacies disappeared, and the general, spo- 
ken language was refined. If any greater mental purity ensued 
from the change, I can scarcely give the credit of it to the party 
at Rambouillet, for, with all their proclaimed refinement, their 
nicety was of the kind described in the well-known maxim of the 
Dean of St. Patrick. 

One of the most remarkable men in the circle of Rambouillet, 
was the Marquis de Salles, Knight of St. Louis. He was the 
second son of the Duke de Montausier, and subsequently inherited 
the title. At the period of his father's death, his mother found 
herself with little doAver but her title. She exerted herself, how- 
ever, courageously. She instructed her children herself, brought 
them up in strict Huguenot principles, and afterward sent them to 
the Calvinistic college at Sedan, where the young students were 
famous for the arguments which they maintained against all comers 
— and they were many — who sought to convert them to popery. 
At an early age he acquired the profession of arms, the only voca- 
tion for a young and portionless noble ; and he shed his blood lib- 
erally for a king who had no thanks to offer to a protestant. His 
wit, refinement, and gallant bearing, made him a welcome guest at 
Rambouillet, where his famous attachment to Julie, who was three 
years his se'hior, gave matter for conversation to the whole of 
France. Courageous himself, he loved courage in others, and his 
love for Julie d'Angennes, was fired by the rare bravery exhibited 
by her in tending a dying brother, the infectious nature of whose 
disorder had made even his hired nurses desert him. In the 
season of mourning, the whole court, led by royalty, went and <lid 
homage to this pearl of sisters. But no admiration fell so sweetly 
upon her ear as that whispered to her by the young Montausier. 
One evidence of his chivalrous gallantry is yet extant. It is in 
that renowned volume called the " Guirlande de Julie," of which 



270 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DATS. 

he was the projector, and in the accomplishing of which, knights, 
artists, and poets, lent their willing aid. It is superb vellum tome. 
The frontispiece is the garland or wreath, from which the volume 
takes its name. Each subsequent page presents one single flower 
from this wreath (there are eighteen of them) with verses in honor 
of Julie, composed by a dozen and a half of very insipid poets. 
This volume was sold some years ago to Madame D'Uzes, a de- 
scendant of the family, when its cost amounted to nearly one thou- 
sand francs per page. 

As everything was singular at Rambouillet, so of course was 
the wooing of Julie and her knight. It was very " long a-doing," 
and we doubt if in the years of restrained ardor, of fabulous con- 
stancy, of reserve, and sad yet pleasing anguish, the lover ever 
dared to kiss the hand of his mistress, or even to speak of mar- 
riage, but by a diplomatic paraphrase. 

The goddesses of Rambouillet entertained an eloquent horror 
of the gross indelicacy of such unions, for which Moliere has 
whipped them with a light but cutting scourge. The lover, more- 
over, was a Huguenot. What was he to do ? Like a true knight 
he rushed to the field, was the hero of two brilliant campaigns, 
and then wooed her as knight of half-a-dozen new orders, mare- 
chal-du-camp, and Governor of Alsatia. The nymph was still 
coy. The knight again buckled on his armor, and in the melee 
at Dettingen was captured by the foe. After a two months' de- 
tention, he was ransomed by his mother, for two thousand crowns. 
He re-entered Rambouillet lieutenant-general of the armies of 
France, and he asked for the recompense of Ins fourteen years 
of constancy and patience. Julie was shocked, for she only thought 
how brief had been the period of their acquaintance* At length 
the marquis made profession of Romanism, and thereby purchased 
the double aid of the church and the throne. The king, the 
queen, Cardinal Mazarin, and a host of less influential members, 
besought her to relent, and the shy beauty at length reluctantly 
surrendered. The marriage took place in 1645, and Julie was then 
within sight of forty years of age. The young chevaliers and 
wits had, you may be sure, much to say thereupon. The elder 
beaux esprit looked admiringly ; but a world of whispered wicked- 
ness went on among them, nevertheless. 



THE RECORD OP RAMBOUILLET. 271 

Montausier, for he now was duke and knight of the Holy Ghost, 
became the reigning sovereign over the literary circle at Ram- 
bouillet, during the declining years of Julie's mother. Catherine 
died in 1665, after a long retirement, and almost forgotten by the 
sons of those whom she once delighted to honor. The most deli- 
cate and the most difficult public employment ever held by the 
duke, was that of governor to the dauphin. This office he filled 
with singular ability. He selected Bossuet and Huet to instruct 
the young prince in the theoretical wisdom of books, but the prac- 
tical teaching was imparted by himself. Many a morning saw 
the governor and his pupil issue from the gilded gates of Versailles 
to take a course of popular study among the cottages and peas- 
antry of the environs. 

The heart of the true knight was shattered by the death of 
Julie in 1671, at the age of sixty-four. He survived her nine- 
teen years. They were passed in sorrow, but also in continual 
active usefulness; and when, at length, in 1690, the grave of his 
beloved wife opened to receive him, Flechier pronounced a fitting 
funeral oration over both. 

The daughter and only surviving child of this distinguished 
pair gave, with her hand, the lordship of Rambouillet to the Due 
d'Uzes, " Chevalier de l'ordre clu Saint Esprit." The knightly 
family of D'Angennes had held it for three centuries. It was in 
1706 destined to become royal. Louis XIV. then purchased it 
for the Count of Toulouse, legitimatized son of himself and 
Madame de Montespan. This count was knight and Grand Ad- 
miral of France, at the age of five years. In 1704, he had just 
completed his twenty -fifth year. He is famous for having encoun- 
tered the fleet commanded by Eook and Shovel, after the capture 
of Gibraltar, and for having what the cautious Russian generals 
call, "withdrawn out of range," when he found himself on the 
point of being utterly beaten. He behaved himself as bravely as 
any knight could have done ; but the government was not satisfied 
with him. Pontchartrain, the Minister of Marine, recalled him, 
sent him to Rambouillet, and left him there to shoot rabbits, and 
like Diocletian, raise cabbages. 

His son and successor, who was the great Duke de Penthievre, 
commenced his knighthood early. He was even made Grand 



272 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

Admiral of France before he knew salt water from fresh. He 
studied naval tactics as Uncle Toby and the corporal fought their 
old battles — namely, with toy batteries. In the duke's case, it 
was, moreover, with little vessels and small sailors all afloat in a 
miniature fish-pond, made to represent, for the nonce, the mighty 
and boundless deep. This grand admiral never ventured on the 
ocean, but he bore himself chivalrously on the bloody field of 
Dettingen, and he won imperishable laurels by his valor at Fon- 
tenoy. For such scenes and their glories, however, the preux 
chevalier cared but little. Ere the French Te Deum was sung 
upon the last-named field, he hastened back to his happy 
hearth at home. Rambouillet was then the abiding-place of all 
the virtues. There the home-loving knight read the Scriptures 
while the duchess sat at his side making garments for the poor. 
There, the Chevalier Florian, his secretary and friend, meditated 
those graceful rhymes and that harmonious prose, in which human 
nature is in pretty masquerade, walking about like Watteau's 
figures, in vizors, brocades, high heels, and farthingales. When 
the duchess died in child-birth, of her sixth child, her husband 
withdrew to La Trappe where, among other ex-soldiers, he for 
weeks prayed and slept upon the bare ground. Five out of his 
children died early. Among them was the chivalrous but intem- 
perate Prince de Lamballe, who died soon after his union with 
the unhappy princess who fell a victim to those fierce French 
revolutionists — who were ordinarily so amiable, according to 
M. Louis Blanc, that they were never so delighted as when they 
could rescue a human being from death. 

It was by permission of the duke, who refused to sell his house, 
that Louis XV. built in the adjacent forest the hunting-lodge of 
St. Hubert. An assemblage of kings, courtiers, knights and ladies 
there met, at whose doings the good saint would have blushed, 
could he have witnessed them. One night the glittering crowd 
had galloped there for a carouse, when discovery was made that 
the materials for supper had been forgotten, or left behind at 
Versailles. " Let us go to Penthievre !" was the universal cry ; 
but the king looked grave at the proposition. Hunger and the 
universal opposition, however, overcame him. Forth the famished 
revellers issued, and played a reveillee on the gates of Rambouillet 



THE RECOfiD OF BAMBOUILLET. 273 

loud enough to have startled the seven sleepers. " Penthievre is 
in bed !" said one. " He is conning his breviary !" sneered 
another. " Gentlemen, he is, probably, at prayers," said the king, 
who, like an Athenian, could applaud the virtue which he failed 
to practise. " Let us withdraw," added the exemplary royal head 
of the order of the Holy Ghost. " If we do," remarked Madame 
du Barry, " I shall die of hunger ; let us knock again." To the 
storm which now beset the gates, the latter yielded ; and as they 
swung open, they disclosed the duke, who, girt in a white apron, 
and with a ladle in his hand, received his visiters with the an- 
nouncement that he was engaged in helping to make soup for the 
poor. The monarch and his followers declared that no poor could 
be more in need of soup than they were. They accordingly 
seized the welcome supply, devoured it with the appetite of those 
for whom it was intended, and paid the grave knight who was 
their host, in the false coin of pointless jokes. How that host 
contrasted with his royal guest, may be seen in the fact told of 
him, when a poor woman kissed his hand, and asked a favor as 
he was passing in a religious procession. " In order of religion 
before God," said he, " I am your brother. In all other cases, 
for ever your friend." The Order of the Holy Ghost never had 
a more enlightened member than he. 

In 1785 Louis XVI. in some sort compelled him to part with 
Rambouillet for sixteen million of francs. He retired to Ku, 
taking with him the bodies of the dead he had loved when living. 
There were nine of that silent company ; and as the Duke 
passed with them on his sad and silent way, the clouds wept over 
them, and the people crowded the long line of road, paying their 
homage in honest tears. 

Then came that revolutionary deluge which swept from Ram- 
bouillet the head of the order of the Holy Ghost, and the entire 
chapter with him; and which dragged from the mead and the 
dairy the queen and princesses, whose pastime it was to milk 
the cows in fancy dresses. The Duke de Penthievre died of the 
Revolution, yet not through personal violence offered to himself. 
The murder of his daughter-in-law, the Princess de Lamballe, was 
the last fatal stroke ; and he died forgiving her assassins and his 
own. 

18 



274 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

During the first Republic there was nothing more warlike at 
Rambouillet than the merino flocks which had been introduced by 
Louis XVI. for the great benefit of his successors. A scene 
rf some interest occurred there in the last days of the empire. 

On the 27th of March, 1814, the empress Maria Louisa with 
the King of Rome in her arms, his silver-gray jacket bear- 
ing those ribboned emblems of chivalry which may still be seen 
upon it at the Louvre, sought shelter there, while she awaited the 
issue of the bloody struggle which her own father was maintaining 
against her husband. The empress passed three days at Ram- 
bouillet, solacing her majestic anguish by angling for carp. Ul- 
timately, the Emperor of Austria entered the hall where his im- 
perial son-in-law had made so many Knights of the Legion of 
Honor, to carry off his daughter and the disinherited heir. As 
the three sat that night together before the wood-fire, the Arch- 
Duchess Maria-Louisa talked about the teeth of the ex-king of 
Rome, while two thousand Austrian soldiers kept watch about 
the palace. 

The gates had again to be open to a fugitive. On the last of 
the " three glorious days" of July a poor, pale, palsied fugitive 
rushed into the chateau, obtained, not easily, a glass of water and 
a crust, and forthwith hurried on to meet captivity at last. This 
was the Prince de Polignae. Two hours after he had left came 
the old monarch Charles X., covered with dust, dropping tears 
like rain, bewildered with past memories and present realities, and 
loudly begging for food for the two " children of France," the oft- 
spring of his favorite son, the Duke de Berri. In his own pal- 
ace a king of France was compelled to surrender his own ser- 
vice of plate, before the village would sell him bread in return. 
When refreshed therewith, he had strength to abdicate in favor 
of his son, the Duke d'Angouleme, who at once resigned in favor 
of his nephew the Duke de Bordeaux ; and tins done, the whole 
party passed by easy stages into an inglorious exile. With them 
was extinguished the Order of the Holy Ghost ; and never since 
that day have the emblematic dove and star been seen on the 
breast of any knight in France. 

Louis Philippe would fain have appropriated Rambouillet to 
himself ; but the government assigned it to the nation, and let it 



THE RECORD OF RAMBOUILLET. 275 

to a phlegmatic German, who had an ambition to sleep on the bed 
of kings, and could afford to pay for the gratification of his fancy. 
It was on the expiration of his lease that the house and grounds 
were made over to a company of speculators, who sadly desecra- 
ted fair Julie's throne. The present sovereign of France has given 
it a worthy occupation. It is now an asylum and a school for the 
children of the brave. It began as the cradle of knights ; and the 
orphans of those who were as brave as any of the chevaliers of 
old now find a refuge at the old hearth of the Knights of Amaury. 
I can well conclude, that, by this time, my readers may be 
weary of foreign scenes and incidents, as we are of real person- 
ages. May I venture then, for the sake of variety, to ask them 
to accompany me " to the well-trod stage, anon ?" There I will 
treat, to the best of my poor ability, of Stage Knights generally ; 
and first, of the greatest of them all — Sir John Falstaff. 



276 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 



SIR JOHN FALSTAFF. 

" I accept that heart 
Which courts my love in most familiar phrase." — Heywood. 

Henry, Earl of Richmond, always creates a favorable impres- 
sion on young people who see him, for the first time, without 
knowing much about him, previously, at the end of Shakespeare's 
tragedy of Richard the Third. This is a far higher degree of 
favor than he merited, for Henry was a very indifferent personage 
indeed. On the other hand Sir John Falstaff has had injustice 
done him by the actors ; and of Shakespeare's jolly old gentleman 
they have made what, down to Macklin's times, they made of 
Shylock, a mere mountebank. 

In the very first scene, in the first part of Henry IV., when the 
Prince and Sir John appear in company, the knight is, by far, a 
more accomplished gentleman than the heir-apparent, for he speaks 
more refinedly of phrase, and indeed seldom indulges in scurrilous 
epithets, until provoked. Strong language is the result of his in- 
firmity of nature, not of vicious inclination. Lord Castlereagh 
was not accounted the less a gentleman for using, as he could do, 
very unsavory phrases occasionally. 

The Prince is the first to rail, while Sir John shows his breed- 
ing and, I will add, his reading, by quoting poetry. But, if he is 
poetical, still more is he philosophical. How gravely does he be- 
seech Hal to trouble him no more with vanity ! And what a cen- 
sure does the heavy philosopher fling at the King's son, when he 
tells the latter that he was hurt to hear the wise remarks of a lord 
of the council touching that son's conduct! The fault of the 
knight is, that he is easily led away into evil ; a common weakness 
with good-natured people. It is only since he held fellowship 



SIR JOHN FALSTAFF. 277 

with the Prince, that the fat follower of the latter had become 
knowing in evil, and Heaven help him, little better, as he says, 
than one of the wicked. Nay, he has enough of orthodoxy left 
to elicit praise, even from the editor of the Record. " O, if a man 
were to be saved by merit," he exclaims, " what hole in hell were 
hot enough to hold him !" 

He robs on the highway, it will be said. Well, let us not be 
too ready to doubt his gentility on that account. There was many 
a noble cut-purse in the grand gallery at Versailles, when it was 
most crowded ; and George Prince of Wales once nearly lost the 
diamond-hilt of his sword, at one of his royal mother's " drawing- 
rooms." The offenders here were but petty-larceny rascals, com- 
pared with FalstafF on the highway. That he defrauded the 
King's exchequer is, certainly, not to be denied. But again, let 
us not be too hasty to condemn good men with little foibles. 
Recollect that St. Francis de Sales very often cheated at cards. 

Robbery on the highway was, after all, only, as I may call it, 
a rag of knighthood. FalstafT robbed in good company. It was 
his vocation. It was the fashion. It was an aristocratic pastime. 
Young blood would have it so ; and Sir John was a boy with the 
boys. In more recent times, your young noble, of small wit and 
too ample leisure, flings stale eggs at unsuspecting citizens, makes 
a hell of his quarters, if he be military, and breaks the necks of 
stage-managers. 

Sir John was, doubtless, one of those of whom Gadshill speaks 
as doing the robbing profession some grace for mere sport's sake. 
" I am joined," says Gadshill, " with no foot land-rakers, no long- 
staff sixpenny strikers, none of those mad mustachio, purple-hued, 
malt-worms, but with nobility, and sanguinity ; burgomasters, and 
great mongers." Indeed, it is matter of fact that, there were 
graver, if not greater men than these among the noble thieves, 
" who would, if matters were looked into, for their own credit- 
^ake, make all whole." There was one at least who, for being a 
highway robber, made none the worse justice, charged to adminis- 
ter halters to poorer thieves. 

But let us return to our old friend. Poor Sir John, I doubt if 
he would have gone robbing, even in the Prince's company, only 
that he was bewitched by his Royal Highness's social qualities. 



278 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

But even then, while patiently enduring all sorts of hard jokes, 
he is really the Mentor of the party, and does not go to rob the 
travellers without first seriously reminding the gentlemen of the 
road, that it was a hanging matter. He would keep them from 
wrong, but as they are resolved on evil commission he accompa- 
nies them. He has explained the law, and he is not too proud to 
share the profits. 

He is brave, too, despite all his detractors ! When the Prince 
and Poins, in disguise, set upon the gentle robbers, as they are 
sharing their booty, FalstafF is the only one who is described as 
giving " a blow or two," before he imitates " the rest," and runs 
away. "When he attacked the travellers he was content to fight 
Ins man; there were four to four. And as to the imaginative 
description of the assault given by Falstaff, I believe it to have 
been uttered in joke and gayety of heart. I have implicit faith 
in the assertion, that he knew the disguised parties as well as 
their mothers did. See how readily he detects the Prince and 
Poins, when they are disguised as " drawers" at the inn in East- 
cheap. If Falstaff was right in the latter case, when he told the 
Prince that he, Falstaff, was a gentleman, I think, too, he had as 
sufficient authority for saying to Hal, " Thou knowest I am as 
valiant as Hercules." I can not believe otherwise of a man 
whose taste was so little vitiated that he could at once detect 
when there was " lime" in his sack, and who no sooner hears that 
the state is in danger, than he suggests to the young Prince that 
he must to court. His obesity may be suspected as not being the 
fruit of much temperance, but there is a Cardinal Archbishop in 
England who is the fattest man in the fifty-two counties, and why 
may we not conclude in both cases, that it is as Falstaff says, and 
that sighing and grief blow up a man like a bladder ? 

Then, only consider the reproof which Falstaff addresses to the 
Prince, speaking in the character of King to that illustrious scape- 
grace. TVisdom more austere, or graver condemnation of excess, 
could hardly be uttered by the whole college of cardinals, at any 
time. The prince is a mere plagiarist from the knight, and when 
he accuses the latter of being given to licentious ways, with what 
respectful humility does the old man plead guilty to Ms years, but 
" saving your reverence," not to the vices which are said to ac- 
company them ? 



SIR JOHN FALSTAPF. 279 

Not that he is perfect, or would boast of being so. " He has 
had" he says touchingly, " a true faith and a good conscience, but 
their date is out." How ill is he requited by the Prince, in whose 
service he has lost these jewels, when his Highness remarks, be- 
fore setting out to the field, " I'll procure this fat rogue a charge 
of foot, and I know his death will be a charge of fourscore." And 
this is said of one who has forgotten what the inside of a church 
is like through keeping this Prince's villanous company ; till when, 
he had been " as virtuously given as a gentleman need be." 
What he considers as the requisite practice of a gentleman, is 
explained by Falstaff in his low estate, and not in the spirit 
which moved him when he u lived well and in good compass." 

But there is a Nemesis at every man's shoulder, and if Falstaff 
was cavalierly careless enough to run up a score at the Boar's 
Head, and to accept even a present of Holland shirts, which he 
ungratefully designates as " filthy dowlas," the way in which he 
was dunned must have been harsh to the feelings of a knight and 
a gentleman. In reviewing his gallantries and his extravagances, 
we must not, in justice to him, forget that he was a bachelor. If 
he degraded himself, he inflicted misery on no Lady Falstaff at 
home. Heroes have been buried, with whole nations for mourn- 
ers, whose offences in this worse respect have been forgotten. 
Not that I would apologise for the knight's familiarity with either 
the Hostess or that remarkably nice young lady, Miss Dorothea 
Tearsheet. I do not know what the private life of that Lord 
Chief Justice may have been who was so very merciless in his 
censure upon the knight ; but I do know that there have been lu- 
minaries as brilliant who have hidden their lights in very noisome 
places and who had not FalstaiFs excuse. 

I am as little embarrassed touching Sir John's character as a 
soldier, as I am about his morals. I do not indeed like to hear 
him acknowledge that he has " misused the King's press most 
damnably," or that he has pocketed "three hundred and odd 
pounds" by illegally releasing a hundred and fifty men. But at 
this very day practices much worse than this are of constant ob- 
servance in the Russian service, where officers and officials, 
whose high-sounding names " exeunt in off," rob the Czar daily, 
and are decorated with the Order of St. Catherine. 



280 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

In the field, I maintain that Falstaff is a hero. As for his cate- 
chism on honor, so far from detracting from his reputation, it 
seems to me to place him on an equality with that modern English 
hero who said that his body trembled at the thought of the perils 
into which his spirited soul was about to plunge him. Falstaff 
did not court death. " God keep lead out of me," is his reason- 
able remark ; " I need no more weight than mine own bowels !" 
But the man who makes this prayer and comment was not afraid 
to encounter death. " / have led my ragamuffins where they are 
peppered." He went then at their head. That there was hot 
work in front of him is proved by what follows. " There's but 
three of my hundred and fifty left alive ; and they are for the 
town's end, to beg during life !" A hundred and forty-seven men 
killed out of a hundred and fifty-one ; of the four who survived, 
three are illustriously mutilated ; while the bold soul who led 
them on is alone unscathed ! Why, it reminds us of Windham 
and the Redan. It is Thermopylae, with Leonidas surviving to 
tell his own story. 

His discretion is not to be taken as disproving his valor. He 
fought Douglas, remember, and did not run away from him. He 
found the Scot too much for him, it is true ; and quietly dropped 
down, as if dead. What then ? When the Muscovite general fell 
back so hurriedly from Eupatoria, how did he describe the move- 
ment ? " Having accomplished," he said, " all that was expected, 
the Russians withdrew out of range." So, Sir John, with respect 
to Douglas. 

Nor would some Muscovite officers and gentlemen object to an- 
other action of FalstafFs. The knight it will be remembered with 
regret, stabs the body of Hotspur, as the gallant Northumbrian 
lies dead, or wounded, upon the field. Now, by this we may see 
that Russia is not only some four centuries behind us in civiliza- 
tion. The barbarous act of Falstaff was committed a score of 
times over on the field of Inkerman. Many a gallant, breathing, 
but helpless English soldier, received the mortal thrust which 
they could not parry, from the hands of the Chevalier Ivan Falstaff, 
who fought under the doubtful inspiration of St. Sergius. And, 
moreover, there were men in authority there who virtually re- 
marked to these heroes what Prince Henry does to Sir John, 



SIR JOHN FALSTAFF. 281 

" If a lie may do thee grace, 
I'll gild it with the happiest terms I have." 

That our Falstaff bore himself with credit on the field, is made 
clear in spite of the incident of Hotspur. I do not pause to point 
out the bearing of Morton's answer, when Northumberland asks 
him, " Didst thou come from Shrewsbury?" — "I ran from Shrews- 
bury, my noble lord," is the reply ; confessing that he ran from a 
foe, among whom Falstaff was a leader : I am more content to 
rest on the verdict of so dignified yet unwilling a witness as the 
Lord Chief Justice. It is quite conclusive. " Your day's service 
at Shrewsbury," says my lord, " hath a little gilded over your 
night's exploit at Gadshill." Nothing can be more satisfactory. 
The bravery of Falstaff was the talk of the town. 

When peace has come, or that Sir John has received permis- 
sion to return home, on urgent private affairs, he enters a little 
into dissipation, it is true. He is not, however, guilty of such 
excess as to materially injure his health ; otherwise his page would 
not have brought him so satisfactory a message from his doctor. 
He may, perhaps, be also open to the charge of being too easily 
taken by such white bait as he might find in the muslin of East- 
cheap. Heroes, however, have usually very inflammable hearts. 
When Nelson was ashore, he immediately fell in love. 

In spite of a trifle of rioting, the overflowing of animal spirits, 
Falstaff is governed by the laws of good society. Jokes are fired 
at him incessantly, but he takes them with good-humor, and repays 
them with interest. " I am not only witty in myself," he says, 
" but the cause that wit is in other men." Gregoire and La Bru- 
yere expressly define the great rule of conversation to be that, while 
you exhibit your own powers, you should endeavor to elicit and en- 
courage those of your companions. What they put down as a canon, 
Sir John had already, and long before, put in excellent practice. 
He had wit enough to foil the Chief Justice, but he left to his 
lordship ample opportunity to exhibit his own ability ; and then 
the compliment to the great judicial dignitary, that he was not yet 
clean past his youth, although he had in him some relish of the 
saltness of time — this, combined with the benevolent recommen- 
dation that his lordship would have a reverend care of his health, 
robs the latter personage of any prejudice he might have entertained 



282 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

against the knight. Indeed, it would be difficult to conceive how 
the religiously-minded Lord Chief Justice could have entertained 
prejudice against a gallant old gentleman who had lost his voice 
with " hollaing" (his men to the charge), " and singing of anthems." 

Brave ! there can be no question touching his bravery. And 
if he does really rust a little at home, and impose a little upon 
the weakness of the Hostess and other ladies, whom he weekly 
woos to marry, and who find his gallantry and saucy promises 
irresistible ; he is ever ready for service. 'He does not look for 
unlimited absence from scenes of danger. If he led his company 
of three hundred and a half to death, and comes out scot-free 
himself, he is by no means prepared to hang about town, inactive 
for the remainder of the campaign. When he is appointed on 
perilous enterprise with Prince John of Lancaster, he simply re- 
marks, with a complacency which is doubtless warranted by truth, 
" There is not a dangerous action can peep out his head, but I am 
ihrust upon it- Well, I can not last for ever ;" and, with this re- 
mark buckled on to some satirical wit which he points at the Lord 
Chief Justice, he sets forth cheerily on his mission, the gout in his 
toe, and in his purse not more than seven groats and twopence. 
He has a rouse and a riot at the Boar's Head before he starts ; 
but nothing more disreputable seems to have occurred than one 
might hear of at a modern club, before some old naval lion is hic- 
cupped on to deeds of daring. Besides, the knight is no hypo- 
crite ; and he will not be accounted virtuous, like many of his 
contemporaries, by " making courtesy and saying nothing." Not, 
on the other hand, that even in his moments of jolly relaxation, 
he would be unseemly noisy. He can troll a merry catch, but, as 
he says to a vulgarly roystering blade, " Pistol, I would be quiet." 
It has been thought unseemly that he should quarrel with and 
even roughly chastise the " ancient" with whom he had been on 
such very intimate terms. But such things happen in the best 
society. At the famous Reform Club dinner, Sir James gave per- 
mission to Sir Charles to go and make war ; but, since that time, 
Sir Charles, with words, instead of rapiers, has been poking his iron 
into the ribs of Sir James, after the fashion of Falstaff and Pistol. 

And so, as I have said, Sir John girds him for the battle. If 
he did in his youth, hear the chimes at midnight, in company with 



SIR JOHN FALSTAFF. 283 

Master Shallow, the lean, but light-living barrister of Clement's 
Inn, he did not waste his vigor. So great indeed is his renown 
for this, and for the bravery which accompanies it, that no sooner 
does the doughty Sir John Colville of the Dale meet him in single 
combat, than Colville at once surrenders. The very idea of such 
a hero being face to face with him impels him to give up his sword 
at once. " I think you are Sir John Falstaff, and in that thought 
yield me." Was ever greater compliment paid to mortal hero ? 

Of this achievement Prince John most ungeneronsly says, that 
it was more the effect of Colville's courtesy than Falstaff' s deserv- 
ing. But, as the latter remarks, the young sober-blooded boy of a 
prince does not love the knight ; and " that's no marvel," exclaims 
Falstaff, " he drinks no wine." The teetotaler of those days dispar- 
agedAhe deeds of a man who increased the sum of his country's 
glory. He was like a sour Anglo-Quaker, sneering down the 
merit of a Crimean soldier. We do not, however, go so far as 
Falstaff in his enthusiasm, when he exclaims that skill in the 
weapon is nothing without sack. There is something in the re- 
mark, nevertheless, as there is when Sir John subsequently says 
in reference to his wits suffering by coming in dull contact with 
obtuse Shallow. " It is certain," says he, " that either wise bear- 
ing or ignorant carriage is caught, as men take diseases, one of 
another ; therefore let men take care of their company." Victor 
Hugo has manifestly condescended to plagiarize this sentiment, 
and has said in one of his most remarkable works, that " On devi- 
ent vieux a force de regarder les vieux." 

And, to come to a conclusion, how unworthily is this gallant 
soldier, merry companion, and profound philosopher, treated al^last 
by an old associate, Prince Hal, when king. Counting on the sa- 
credness of friendship, Sir John had borrowed from Master Shal- 
low a thousand pounds. He depended upon being able to repay 
it out of the new monarch's liberality, but when he salutes the 
sovereign — very imopportunely, I confess — the latter, with a 
cold-hearted and shameless ingratitude, declares that he does not 
know the never-to-be-forgotten speaker. King Henry V. does 
indeed promise — 

"For competence of life, I will allow you ; 
That lack of means enforce yon not to evil ;" 



284 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

and departs, after intimating that the knight must not reside with- 
in ten miles of court, and that royal favor will be restored to the 
banished man, if merit authorize it. 

" Be it your charge, my lord, to see performed the tenor of our 
word," says the King to the Chief Justice ; and Falstaff, though 
sorely wounded in feelings, is still not without hope. But see 
what a royal word, or what this royal word is ! The Monarch 
has no sooner passed on his way, than the Chief Justice fulfils its 
meaning, by ordering Sir John Falstaff and all his company to be 
close-confined in the Fleet ! The great dignitary does this with 
as much hurried glee as we may conjecture Lord Campbell 
would have had, in rendering the same service to Miss Agnes 
Strickland, when the latter accused the judge of stealing her story 
of Queen Eleanor of Provence. 

However this may be, the royal ingratitude broke the proud 
heart in the bosom of Sir John. He took to his bed, and never 
smiled again. " The King has killed his heart," is the bold asser- 
tion of Dame Quickly, at a time when such an assertion might 
have cost her her liberty, if not her life. How edifying too was 
his end ! He did not " babble o' green fields." Mr. Collier has 
proved this, to the satisfaction of all Exeter Hall, who would 
deem such light talk trifling. But he died arguing against " the 
whore of Babylon," which should make him find favor even with 
Dr. Cumming, for it is a proof of the knight's Protestantism — and 
" Would I were with him," exclaims honest lieutenant Bardolph, 
with more earnestness than reverence — " Would I were with him, 
wheresome'er he is ; either in heaven or in hell." If this has a 
profene ring in it, let us think of the small education and the hard 
life of him who uttered it. There was more profanity and terrible 
blasphemy to boot, in the assertion of Prince Menschikoff, after 
the death of the Czar Nicholas, namely, " that his late august mas- 
ter might be seen in the skies blessing his armies on their way to 
victory !" Decidedly, I prefer Bardolph to Menschikoff, and Fal- 
staff to both. 

I am sorry that Queen Elizabeth had the bad taste to request 
Shakespeare to represent " Falstaff in love." The result is only 
an Adelphi farce in five acts ; in which the author, after all, has 
made the knight far more respectable than that sorry fool, Ford. 



SIR JOHN FALSTAFF. 285 

The " Wives" themselves are not much stronger in virtue than 
Dorothea of Eastcheap, unless Sir John himself "was mistaken in 
them. Of Mrs. Ford, who holds her husband's purse-strings, he 
says, " I can construe the action of her familiar style," and he tells 
us what that manner was, pretty distinctly. When he writes to 
Mrs. Page, he notices a common liking which exists in both, in 
the words, " You love sack, and so do I." The " Wives," for mere 
mischief's sake, we will say, tempted the gallant old soldier. In 
their presence he had left off swearing, praised woman's modesty, 
and gave such orderly and well-behaved reproof to all uncomeli- 
ness, that Mrs. Page thought, perhaps, that drinking sack, and, in 
company with Mrs. Ford, talking familiarly with him, would not 
tempt him to turn gallant toward them. This consequence did 
follow ; and then the sprightly Wives, in place of bidding their ri- 
diculous husbands cudgel him, come to the conclusion that " the 
best way was to entertain him with hope," till his wickedly raised 
fire should have " melted him in his own grease." A dangerous 
process, ladies, depend upon it ! 

Then, what a sorry cur is that Master Ford who puts Falstaff 
upon the way to seduce his own wife ! Had other end come of it 
than what did result, is there a jury even in Gotham, that would 
have awarded Ford a farthing's-worth of separation. Falstaff is 
infinitely more refined than Ford or Page. Neither of these 
noodles could have paid such sparkling compliments as the knight 
pays to the lady. " Let the court of France show me such anoth- 
er ! I see how thine eyes would emulate the diamond ; thou hast 
the right-arched bent of the brow, that becomes the ship-tire, the 
tire-valiant, or any tire of Venetian admittance !" Why this is a 
prose Anacreontic ! And if the speaker of it could offend once, 
he did not merit to be allured again by hope to a greater punish- 
ment than he had endured for his first offence. 

For one of the great characteristics of Falstaff is his own sense 
of seemliness. When he was nearly drowned by being tossed 
from the buck-basket into the river, his prevalent and uneasy idea 
was, how disgusting he should look if he were to swell — a moun- 
tain of mummy ! The Mantelini of Mr. Dickens borrowed from 
Falstaff this aversion to a "denimed damp body." It is not 
pleasant ! 



286 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

Once again, Sir John, though he could err, yet he was ashamed 
of his offence. Otherwise, would he have confessed, as he did, 
when recounting how the mock fairies had tormented him, " I was 
three or four times in the thought they were not fairies, but the 
guiltiness of my mind, the sudden surprise of my powers drove 
the grossness of the foppery into a received belief." How exquis- 
itely is this said ! How does it raise the knight above the broad 
farce of most of the other characters ! How infinitely superior is 
he to the two dolts of husbands who, after hearing the confession 
of guilty intention against the honor of their wives, invite him to 
spend a jolly evening in company with themselves and the ladies. 
And so they — 

" Every one go home, 
And laugh this sport o'er by a wintry fire, 
Sir John and all." 

This may be accounted too gross for probability ; but worse than 
this is in the memory of our yet surviving fathers. There was, 
within such a memory, a case tried before Sir Elijah Impey, in 
which Talleyrand was the defendant, against whom a husband 
brought an action, the great statesman having robbed him of his 
wife. The action was brought to the ordinary issue ; and a few 
weeks subsequently, plaintiff, defendant, judge, and lady, dined to- 
gether in the Prince's residence at Paris. 

Of Stage Falstaffs, Quin, according to all accounts, must have 
been the best, provided only that he had a sufficiency of claret in 
him, and the house an overflowing audience. Charles Kemble, I 
verily believe, must have been the worst of stage Falstaffs. At 
least, having seen him in the character, I can conscientiously assert 
that I can not imagine a poorer Sir John. He dressed the char- 
acter well ; but as for its " flavor," it was as if you had the two 
oyster-shells, minus the fat and juicy oyster. What a galaxy of 
actors have shined or essayed to shine in this joyous but difficult 
part ! In Charles the Second's days, Cartwright and Lacy, by 
their acting in the first part of Henry IV., made Shakespeare pop- 
ular, when the fashion at Court was against him. Betterton acted 
the same part in 1700, at Lincoln's Inn Fields and the Haymarket. 
Four years later, he played the Knight in the " Merry Wives ;" 
and in 1730, at Drury Lane, he and Mills took the part alternate- 



SIR JOHN FALSTAFF. 287 

ly, and set dire dissension among the play-goers, as to their respec- 
tive merits. 

Popular as Betterton was in this character, after he had grown 
too stout for younger heroes, his manner of playing it was not 
original ; and his imitation was at second-hand. Ben Jonson had 
seen it played in Dublin by Baker, a stone-mason. He was so 
pleased with the representation, that he described the manner of 
it, on his return to London, to Betterton, who, docile and modest 
as usual, acknowledged that the mason's conception was better than 
his own, and adopted the Irish actor's manner, accordingly. 

Chetwood does not tell us how Baker played, but he shows us 
how he studied, namely in the streets, while overlooking the men 
who worked under him. " One day, two of his men who were 
newly come to him, and were strangers to his habits, observing his 
countenance, motion, gesture, and his talking to himself, imagined 
their master was mad. Baker, seeing them neglect their work to 
stare at him, bid them, in a hasty manner, mind their business. 
The fellows went to work again, but still with an eye to their mas- 
ter. The part Baker was rehearsing was Falstaff ; and when he 
came to the scene where Sir Walter Blunt was supposed to be 
lying dead on the stage, gave a look at one of his new paviors, and 
with his eye fixed upon him, muttered loud enough to be heard, 
' Who have we here ? Sir Walter Blunt ! There's honor for 
you.' The fellow who was stooping, rose on the instant, and with 
the help of his companion, bound poor Baker hand and foot, and 
assisted by other people no wiser than themselves, they carried 
him home in that condition, with a great mob at their heels." 

Estcourt's Falstaff was fiat and trifling, yet with a certain wag- 
gishness. That of Harper was droll, but low and coarse. The 
Falstaff of Evans seems to have been in the amorous scenes, as 
offensive as Dowton in Major Sturgeon ; and the humor was mis- 
placed. Accordingly, when we read in old Anthony Aston, that 
" Betterton wanted the waggery of Estcourt, the drollery of Har- 
per, and the lasciviousness of Jack Evans," we are disposed to 
imagine that his Falstaff was none the worse for this trial of 
wants. 

Throughout the eighteenth century, the character did not lack 
brilliant actors. In the first part of Henry IV., Mills played the 



288 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

character, at Druiy, in 1716. Booth had previously played it 
for one night, in presence of Queen Anne. Bullock filled Lin- 
coln's Inn Fields Theatre, with it, in 1721. Quin, in 1738, used 
to play the character in the two parts of Henry IV. on successive 
nights, and eight years later his Falstaff attracted crowds to " the 
Garden." Barry played it against him at Drury, in 1743 and 
1747 ; but Barry was dull and void of impulse as a school-boy 
repeating his task. In 1762, the part, at Drury, fell to Yates, for 
whom the piece was brought out, with the character of Hotspur 
omitted ! To give more prominence to our knight, a scene was 
left out. The public did not approve of the plan, for in the same 
year Love, celebrated by Churchill for his humor, made his first 
appearance at Drury, as Sir John, when Holland, the baker of 
Chiswick, played Hotspur, with well-bred warmth. I will add, 
that though Quin drew immense houses, yet when Harper, some 
years previously, played the same part at Drury, with Booth hi 
Hotspur, Wilks as the Prince, and Cibber as Glendower, the com- 
bined excellence drew as great houses for a much longer period. 
So that Harper's Falstaff, although inferior to Quin's, was, as was 
remarked, more seen, yet less admired by the town. Shuter 
played it almost too " jollily" at the Garden, in 1774. But all 
other Falstaffs were extinguished for a time, when Henderson, 
although not physically qualified for the part, astonished the town 
with his "old boy of the castle," in 1777 at the Haymarket, and 
delighted them two years later, at Covent Garden. At the latter 
house, eight years subsequently, Ryder played it respectably, to 
Lewis's Prince of "Wales; and in 1791, when the Drury Lane 
company were playing at the Haymarket, Palmer represented 
Falstaff, and John Keinble mis-represented Hotspur. King tried 
the knight at the same " little house," in 1792, but King, clever as 
he was, was physically incapable of representing Falstaff, and he 
soon ceased to pretend to do so. The next representative was the 
worst the world had yet seen — namely, Fawcett, who first at- 
tempted it at the Garden, in 1795. Blisset appeared in it in 
1803, and disappeared also. From this time no new actor tried 
the Sir John, in the first part of Henry IV., till 1824, when 
Charles Kemble made the Ghost of Shakespeare veiy uneasy, by 
executing a part for which he was totally unfit. He persevered, 



SIR JOHN FALSTAFP. 289 

however, but the success of Elliston in the part, two years later, 
settled the respective merits of two performers, to the advantage 
of Robert William, as effectually as Grisi showed the town that 
there was but one Norma, by playing it the night after the fatal 
attempt made on the Druidess, by Jenny Lind. 

The succession of actors who represented Falstaff, in the second 
part of Henry IV., was as brilliant as that of the line of repre- 
sentatives above noticed. Ten years after Betterton and Mills, in 
1720, we have Harper, and it is somewhat singular that when 
Mills resigned Falstaff to Harper, he took the part of the King. 
Hulett, two years subsequently played it at Covent Garden ; 
and, after another two years, Quin made Drury ecstatic with his 
fun. He held the part without a real rival, and fifteen years later, 
in 1749, he was as attractive as ever in this portion of the knight's 
character, at Covent Garden. Shuter succeeded him in the part 
at this theatre, in 1755 ; but in 1758, all London, that is the play- 
goers of London, might be seen hurrying once more to Drury, to 
witness lively Woodward's very old Falstaff played to Garrick's 
King. The Garden can not be said to have found a superior 
means of attraction, when Shuter again represented Sir John, at 
the Garden, in 1761, on which occasion the parts of Shallow and 
Silence were omitted ! The object, however, was to shorten the 
piece, and the main attraction was in the coronation pageant, at 
the conclusion, in honor of the then young King and Queen, who 
were well worthy of the honor thus paid to them. 

Love and Holland, who played Falstaff and Hotspur, at Drury 
Lane, in 1762, played the Knight and the Prince of Wales, at 
the same house, two years subsequently. Nine years after this, 
the Garden found a Prince in Mrs. Lessingham, Shuter played 
Falstaff to her, but the travesty of the former character was 
only in a slight degree less incongruous than that made by Mrs. 
Glover, in the present century, who once, if not twice, played the 
fat knight, for her own benefit. For the next eight or nine years, 
the best Falstaff possessed by London was Henderson. He 
played the part first at Drury, and afterward at Covent Garden. 
Since Quin, there had been no better representative of Sir John ; 
and even Palmer, in 1788, could not bring the town from its alle- 
giance to " admirable Henderson." 

19 



290 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

The Falstaffs of the present century, in the second part of this 
historical play, have not achieved a greater triumph than Hender- 
son. Cooke, who played the obese cavalier, in 1804, was not 
equal to the part; and Fawcett, in 1821, when the play was' re- 
vived, with another coronation pageant in honor of George IV., 
was farther from success than Cooke. The managers at this 
period were wiser than those who " got up" the play at the period 
of the accession of George HI., for they retained Shallow and 
Silence, and never were the illustrious two so inimitably represent- 
ed as, on this occasion, by Farren and Emery. 

The chief Falstaffs of the "Merry Wives of Windsor" are 
Betterton (1704), Hulett (1732), Quin (1734), Delane, the young 
Irish actor (1743), of whom Garrick was foolish enough to be 
jealous ; Shuter (1758), Henderson, who first played it at the 
Haymarket in 1777, and Lee Lewis in 1784. Bartley, Phelps, 
and a clever provincial actor, now in London, named Bartlett, 
have also played this character with great effect. The Falstaff 
of the last-named actor is particularly good. 

I have said that Quin was the greatest of Falstaffs, but the 
greatest in the physical acceptation of the term, was undoubtedly 
Stephen Kemble. This actor was born almost upon the boards. 
His clever, but not very gentle-tempered mother, had just con- 
cluded her performance of Anne Bullen, in a barn, or something 
like it, at Kingstown, Herefordshire (1758), when Stephen was 
born, about the period when, according to the action of the play, 
the Princess Elizabeth is supposed to first see the light. Stephen 
when he had grown to manhood, weighed as much as all his 
sisters and brothers put together; and on the 7th of October, 
1802, he made his appearance at Drury, in the character of Fal- 
staff. This was nearly twenty years after he had made his debut 
in London, at Co vent Garden, in Othello. Bannister junior 
prefaced his performance of the companion of Prince Hal, by 
some humorous lines, joking on the heaviness of the actor. As 
Pope played Hotspur, I should fancy, if Pope then was anything 
like what he was some fifteen or sixteen years later, that Hotspur 
was even heavier than Sir John. The lines alluded to were ac- 
counted witty ; and I will conclude my record of the principal 
actors who have represented the knight, by reproducing them. 



SIR JOHN FALSTAFF. 291 

A Falstaff here to-night, by nature made, 

Lends to your fav'rite bard his pond'rous aid; 

No man in buckram, he ! no stuffing gear, 

No feather- bed, nor e'en a pillow here ! 

But all good honest flesh and blood, and bone, 

And weighing, more or less, some thirty stone. 

Upon the northern coast by chance we caught him, 

And hither, in a broad-wheeled wagon, brought him : 

For in a chaise the varlet ne'er could enter, 

And no mail-coach on such a fare would venture. 

Blessed with unwieldiness, at least his size 

Will favor find in every critic's eyes. 

And should his humor and his mimic art 

Bear due proportion to his outward part, 

As once was said of Macklin in the Jew, 

" This is the very Falstaff Shakespeare drew." 

To you, with diffidence, he bids me say, 

Should you approve, you may command his stay, 

To lie and swagger here another day. 

If not, to better men he'll leave his sack, 

And go, as ballast, in a collier back. 

In concluding this section of my gossiping record, I will add 
that the supposition of Shakespeare having intended to represent 
Sir John Oldcastle under the title of Sir John Falstaff, is merely a 
supposition. It has never been satisfactorily made out. Far other- 
wise is the case with that gallant Welsh man-at-arms, Flaellin. The 
original of this character was a David Gam of Brecknock, who 
having killed a cousin with an unpronounceable name, in the High 
Street of Brecknock, avoided the possibly unpleasant consequences 
by joining the Lancastrian party. Gam was merely a nickname, 
having reference to an obliquity of vision in the doughty and dis- 
putative David. The real name was Llewellyn ; and if Shake- 
speare disguised the appellation, it was from notions of delicacy, 
probably, as the descendants of the hero were well known and re- 
spected at the English court in Shakespeare's time. Jones, in his 
" History of Brecknockshire," identifies the personage in question 
in this way : " I have called Fluellin a burlesque character, be- 
cause his pribbles and prabbles, which were generally out-heroded, 
sound ludicrously to an English as well as a Welsh ear ; yet, after 
all, Llewellyn is a brave soldier and an honest fellow. He is ad- 
mitted into a considerable degree of intimacy with the King, and 



292 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

stands high in his good opinion, which is a strong presumptive 
proof, notwithstanding Shakespeare, the better to conceal his ob- 
ject, describes the death of Sir David Gam, that he intended David 
Llewellyn by his portrait of the testy Welshman, for there was 
no other person of that country in the English army, who could 
have been supposed to be upon such terms of familiarity with the 
King." It is singular that the descendants of the Welsh knight 
subsequently dropped the proud old name with more l's in it than 
syllables, and adopted the monosyllabic soubriquet. Squinting 
David, who fought so well at Agincourt, would have knocked 
down any man who would have dared to address him personally 
as " Gam," that is, " game," or " cock-eyed." His posterity proved 
less susceptible ; and Mr. Jones says of them, in a burst of melan- 
choly over fallen greatness : " At different periods between the 
years 1550 and 1700, I have seen the descendants of the hero of 
Agincourt (who lived like a wolf and died like a lion) in the pos- 
session of every acre of ground in the county of Brecon ; at the 
commencement of the eighteenth century, I find one of them com- 
mon bellman of the town of Brecknock, and before the conclusion, 
two others, supported by the inhabitants of the parish where they 
reside ; and even the name of Gam is, in the legitimate line, ex- 
tinct." Mr. Jones might have comforted himself by remembering 
that as the Gams went out, the Kembles cames in, and that the 
illustrious Sarah dignified by her birth the garret of that " Shoulder 
of Mutton" public-house, which stood in the street where chivalrous 
but squinting Davy had slain his cousin with the unpronounceable 
name. 

John Kemble occasionally took some unwarrantable liberties 
with Shakespeare. When he produced the "Merry Wives of 
Windsor" at Co vent Garden, in April, 1804 (in which he played 
Ford to Cooke's Falstaff), he deprived Sir Hugh Evans of his 
knightly title, out of sheer ignorance, or culpable carelessness. 
Blanchard was announced for " Hugh Evans," without the Sir. 
Hawkins, quoting Fuller, says that " anciently in England, there 
were more Sirs than Knights ;" and as I have noticed in another 
page, the monosyllabic Sir was common to both clergymen and 
knights. To the first, however, only by courtesy, when they had 
attained their degree of B. A. In a " New Trick to cheat the 



SIR JOHN FALSTAFF. 293 

Devil," Anne says to her sire, " Nay, sir ;" to which the father re- 
plies — 

" Sir me no sirs ! I am no knight nor churchman." 

But John Kemble was complimentary to Shakespeare, compared 
with poor Frederick Reynolds, who turned the " Merry Wives of 
Windsor into an opera, in 1824 ; and although Dowton did not 
sing Falstaff, as Lablache subsequently did, the two wives, repre- 
sented by Miss Stephens and Miss Cubitt, warbled, instead of 
being merry in prose, and gave popularity to " I know a bank." 
At the best, Fenton is but an indifferent part, but Braham was 
made to render it one marked especially by nonsense. Greenwood 
had painted a scene representing Windsor under a glowing summer 
sky, under which Fenton (Braham) entered, and remarked, very 
like Shakespeare : " How I love this spot where dear Anne Page 
has often met me and confessed her love ! Ha ! I think the sky 
is overcast — the wind, too, blows like an approaching storm. 
Well, let it blow on ! I am prepared to brave its fury." Where- 
upon the orchestra commenced the symphony, and Mr. Braham 
took a turn up the stage, according to the then approved plan, be- 
fore he commenced his famous air of " Blow, blow, thou winter 
wind !" And the fun-anent Falstaff and the Fords was kept wait- 
ing for nonsense like this ! 

While on the subject of the chivalrous originals of the mock 
knights of the Stage, I may be permitted to mention here, that 
Jonson's Bobadil was popularly said to have been named after, if 
not founded upon, a knight in the army of the Duke of Alva, en- 
gaged in subduing the Netherlands beneath the despotism of Philip 
II. According to Strada, after the victory at Giesen, near Mons, 
in 1570, Alva sent Captain Bobadilla to Spain, to inform Philip 
of the triumph to his arms. " The ostentation of the message, and 
still more of the person who bore it, was the origin of the name 
being applied to any vain-glorious boaster." The Bobadilla family 
was an illustrious one, and can hardly be supposed to have fur- 
nished a member who, in any wise, resembles Jonson's swash- 
buckler. On the other hand, there was Boabdil, the last sultan of 
Granada, who had indeed borne himself lustily, in his early days, 
in the field, but who at last cried like a child at losing that Granada 



294 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

which he was not man enough to defend. But it would be injus- 
tice even to the son of Muley Abel Hassan, to imagine that Jon- 
son only took his name to distinguish therewith the knight of huge 
words and weapons who lodged with Oliver Cob the Water- 
bearer. 

The few other Stage Knights whom I have to name, I will in- 
troduce them to the reader in the next chapter. 



STAGE KNIGHTS. 295 



STAGE KNIGHTS. 

" The stage and actors are not so contemptful 
As every innovating puritan, 
And ignorant swearer, out of jealous envy, 
Would have the world imagine." — George Chapman. 

The Commonwealth had no admiration for the stage, and no 
toleration for actors. When theatricals looked up again, the stage 
took its revenge, and seldom represented a puritan who was not a 
knave. There is an instance of this in the old play, entitled " The 
Puritan, or the Widow of Watling Street." " Wilt steal me thy 
master's chain ?" quoth Captain Idle to Nicholas St. Antlings, the 
puritan serving-man. " Steal my master's chain !" quoth Nicho- 
las ; " no, it shall ne'er be said that Nicholas St. Antlings commit- 
ted bird-lime. Anything else that I can do," adds the casuist in a 
serge jerkin, " had it been to rob, I would ha' done it ; but I must 
not steal, that's the word, the literal, Thou shalt not steal; and 
would you wish me to steal then ?" " No, faith," answers Pye- 
board, the scholar; "that were too much; — but wilt thou nim it 
from him ?" To which honest St. Nicholas, so anxious to observe 
the letter of th<\ law, so careless about its spirit, remarks, with 
alacrity, "That, I will !" 

I have said in another page, that ridicule was especially show- 
ered down upon some of those whom Oliver delighted to honor. 
As late as the era of Sir George Etherege, we find " one of Oliver's 
knights" figuring as the buffoon of that delicate gentleman's com- 
edy, " The Comical Revenge." It is hardly creditable to the times, 
or to the prevailing taste, that the theatre in Lincoln's-inn Fields 
cleared one thousand pounds, in less than a month, by this comedy ; 
and that the company gained more reputation by it, than by any 



296 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

preceding piece represented on the same stage. The plot is soon 
told. Two very fine and not very profligate gentlemen, Lord 
Beaufort and Colonel Bruce, are in love with a tolerably-refined 
lady, Graciana. The lord wins the lady, and the philosophical 
soldier accepts a certain Aurelia, who has the singular merit of 
being in love with the Colonel. The under-plot has " Oliver's 
knight" for its hero. The latter is a Sir Nicholas Cully who is 
cheated out of a promissory note for one thousand pounds, by two 
gentlemen-sharpers, Wheadle and Palmer. Sir Nicholas is partly 
saved by the gay, rather than moral, Sir Frederick Frolick. The 
latter recovers the note, but he passes off his mistress on Sir Nich- 
olas as his sister, and induces him to marry her. The only differ- 
ence between the sharpers and the " Knight baronet," Sir Fred- 
erick, is this: — Wheadle had dressed up his mistress, Grace, as 
as Widow B-ich; and Sir Nicholas had engaged to marry her, 
under certain penalties, forced on him by Wheadle and his friend. 
Sir Frederick, at the conclusion, marries the Widow, to oblige a 
lady who is fond of him, and the curtain falls upon the customary 
indecent jokes, and the following uneasy and metrical maxim : — 

" On what small accidents depends our Fate, 
While Chance, not Prudence, makes us fortunate." 

What the two Bettertons made of Lord Beaufort and Graciana, 
I do not pretend to say, but Nokes is said to have been " scream- 
ingly farcical," to adopt an equivalent modern phrase, in Sir Nich- 
las Cully. His successor, Norris, fell short of the great original 
in broad humor, but Nokes himself was surpassed by Dogget, who 
played " Oliver's Knight" with all the comic effect which he im- 
parted to the then low comedy part of Shylock. It is inexplicable 
to me how any actor would ever have extracted a laugh from the 
audience at anything he had to say, or chose to do, when enacting 
the " Cavalier of the Commonwealth." There is not a humorous 
speech, nor a witty remark, nor a comic situation for the knight to 
profit by. In 1664, however, people could laugh heartily at see- 
ing one of the Protector's knights swindled, and beaten on the 
stage. The knight is represented as a thirsty drunkard, " all the 
drier for the last night's wetting," with a more eager desire to at- 
tack the ladies of cavaliers than cavaliers themselves, and no re- 



STAGE KNIGHTS. 297 

luctance to cheat any man who will undertake to throw a main 
with him at dice. He has, however, great reluctance to pay his 
losses, when he unconsciously falls into the hands of a greater 
knave than himself, and bodily declares — 

" I had been a madman to play at such a rate, 
If I had ever intended to pay." 

He had less boldness in accepting the results of such a declaration, 
and in meeting his antagonist at the end of a rapier. He is 
brought to the sticking-point, just as Acres is, by an assurance that 
his adversary is an arrant coward. The scene of " the Field" is 
worth quoting in part, inasmuch as it is not only an illustration of 
the spirit of chivalry, as imputed to Oliver's knights by cavalier- 
poets, but also as it will, perhaps, serve to show that when Sheri- 
dan sat down at his table in Orchard Street, Portman Square, to 
bring Acres and Beverley together in mortal combat, he probably 
had a copy of Etherege's play before — or the memory of it strong 
within — him. 

Wheadle and Cully are on the stage : — 

W. What makes you so serious ? 

C. I am sony I did not provide for both our safeties. 

W. How so? 

C. Colonel Hanson is my neighbor, and very good friend. I might have 
acquainted him with the business, and got him, with a file of musketeers, to 
secure us all. 

W. But this would not secure your honor. "What would the Avorld have 
judged. 

C. Let the world have judged what it would ! Have we not had many 
precedents of late 1 and the world knows not what to judge. 

It may be observed here, that Sir Nicholas may be supposed to 
be alluding to such men as Hans Behr, who was much addicted to 
firing printed broadsides at his adversaries, who advertised him as 
"poltroon" in return. There are some placards having reference 
to this matter, in the British Museum, which admirably display 
the caution of the wordsmen and the spirit of the swordsmen of 
that day. But to resume. Cully, observing that his adversary 
has not arrived, suggests that his own duty has been fulfilled, and 
that he " will be going," the more particularly, says the knight, as 
" the air is so bleak, I can no longer endure it." 



298 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

W. Have a little patience. Methinks I see two making toward us in the 
uext close. 

C. Where ? Where 1 'Tis thern ! 

W. Bear up bravely, now, like a man. 

C. I protest I am the worst dissembler, now, in cases of this nature. 

W. Allons ! Look like a man of resolution. Whither, whither go you 1 

€. But to the next house to make my will, for fear of the worst. Tell 
them I'll be here again, presently. 

The provident knight is, however, detained, and on Palmer and 
that gentleman's second appearing, the swords are measured, "and 
all strip but Cully, who fumbles with his doublet." 

P. Come, sir ! are you ready for this sport ? 

C By-and-by, sir. I will not rend the buttons from my doublet for no 
man's pleasure. 

And so " Oliver's Knight" continues to procrastinate ; he can 
not be either pricked or pinked into action ; and at length, plead- 
ing that his conscience will not let him fight in a wrong cause, he 
purchases a whole skin, at the price of a promissory note for a 
thousand pounds. 

I have said that there is no comic situation for the actor who 
represents Sir Nicholas, but the scene from which the above pas- 
sages are taken may, perhaps, be an exception to the rule. That 
Sheridan has profited by it, will be clear to any reader who will 
take the trouble to compare this scene with the fighting scene in 
the " Rivals." The latter is far richer in humor, and while we 
care very little what becomes of Sir Nicholas, we should regret 
that any harm should befall poor Acres — although he prefers 
fighting at forty paces, would stand sidewise to be shot at, feels 
that he would be horribly afraid if he were alone, and confesses that 
valor oozes out at the palms of his hands when his adversary ap- 
pears in sight, with pistols for two. 

Sir Nicholas is in spirits again when making love to one whom 
he considers a woman of rank and fortune. No cavalier could 
then vie with him in finery. " I protest," he says, " I was at least 
at sixteen brokers, before I could put myself exactly in the fash- 
ion." But with all this, he is a craven again when he is called 
upon to enter and address her who awaits the wooing with impa- 
tience. " Come !" he exclaims, " I will go to the tavern and swal- 



STAGE KNIGHTS. 299 

low two whole quarts of w r ine instantly ; and when I am drunk, 
ride on a drawer's back, to visit her.'' Wheadle suggests that 
" some less frolic will do, to begin with." — " I will cut three draw- 
ers over the pate, then," says the knight, " and go with a tavern- 
lanthorn before me at noonday ;" — just as very mad gallants were 
wont to do. 

The liquor has not the effect of rendering Oliver's knight decent, 
for in proposing the health of " my lord's sister," he does it in the 
elegant form of " Here's a brimmer to her then, and all the fleas 
about her ;" offers to break the windows to show his spirit, and in 
the lady's very presence exclaims, " Hither am I come to be drunk, 
that you may see me drunk, and here's a health to your flannel 
petticoat." The latter gentillesse is by way of proof of the knight's 
quality, for it was of the very essence of polite manners, when a 
spirited gentleman drank to a spirited lady, to strain the wine 
through what the Chesterfields and Mrs. Chapones of that day, if 
such were to be found, would not have blushed to call " their 
smocks." 

But enough of the way in which the stage represented u one of 
Oliver's knights." He is not worse than the courtiers and gentle- 
men by whom he is swindled out of his money and into a wife. 
Nay, nearly the last sentence put into his mouth is, at least, a com- 
plimentary testimony to the side of which Sir Nicholas is but an 
unworthy member. " If I discover this," he remarks, " I am lost. 
I shall be ridiculous even to our own party." — The reader will, 
probably, not require to be reminded that before Etherege drew 
Cully, Jonson had depicted Sogliardo, and that the latter, in the 
very spirit of Oliver's knight, remarks : — " I do not like the humor 
of challenge ; it may be accepted." 

The stage, from about the middle of the seventeenth century to 
nearly the middle of the succeeding century, was uncommonly 
busy with knights as heroes of new plays. The piece which 
brought most money to the theatrical treasury, after the " Comical 
Revenge," was the " Sir Martin Mar-all," an adaptation by Dry- 
dren, from the " Etourdi" of Moliere. Such adaptations were in 
fashion, and the heroes of the French author were invariably 
knighted on their promotion to the English stage. Such was the 
case with " Sir Solomon, or the Cautious Coxcomb," adapted by 



300 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

Carill, from Moliere's " Ecole des Femmes." The same course 
was adopted by Mrs. Behn when she transferred Moliere's " Mal- 
ade Imaginaire" to the stage at Dorset Gardens, and transformed 
Argon into Sir Patient Fancy. One of the characters in this in- 
tolerably indecent play instructs the city knight's lady how to di- 
vide her time according to the fashion set by "the quality." 
" From eight to twelve," he says, " you ought to employ in dres- 
sing. Till two, at dinner. Till five, in visits. Till seven, at the 
play. Till nine, in the park ; and at ten, to supper with your 
lover." 

In the " Sir Barnaby Whig, or No Wit like a Woman's," one 
of D'Urfey's comedies, and produced in 1681, we have again a 
hero who is described as one of Oliver's knights. The play is 
avowedly a party piece, and the author, in his prologue, remarks, 

"That he shall know both parties now, he glories ; 
By hisses, Whigs ; and by their claps, the Tories." 

The audience at the " Theatre Royal," in the days of Charles II., 
was made especially merry by this poor jest. Sir Barnaby is rep- 
resented as a Cromwellian fanatic, who will not drink the King's 
health ; is in an agony of terror at hearing that an army of twenty 
thousand men is about to sweep every rebel from the land ; turns 
traitor ; sings a comic song against the Roundheads ; is saluted as 
Rabbi Achitophel ; offers to turn Roman Catholic or Mohammedan ; 
and is finally consigned to Newgate. 

Mrs. Behn, in the same year, had her political knight as well as 
D'Urfey. In this lady's more than usually licentious play, the 
" City Heiress," performed at Dorset Gardens, she has a Sir Tim- 
othy Treat-all for her comic hero. She boasts in her introduction 
that her play is political, loyal, true Tory all over ; and as " Whig- 
gism has become a jest," she makes a caricature of Sir Timothy, 
an old, seditious, Oliverian knight, who keeps open house for com- 
monwealth-men and true-blue Protestants. He is contrasted with 
two Tory knights, Sir Anthony and Sir Charles Meriwill, and a 
Tory gentleman, named Wilding. The old Whig knight, however, 
is by far the least disreputable fellow of the lot. The Tory knights 
and their friends are rogues, perjurers, and something worse. 
When they are not on the stage, Mrs. Behn is not afraid to tell 



STAGE KNIGHTS. 301 

what they are about, and that in the very plainest language. 
" D — n the City !" exclaims the courtly Sir Charles. " Ay, ay !" 
adds his uncle, Sir Anthony, " and all the "Whigs, Charles, d — n 
all the Whigs!" — And in such wise did Mrs. Afra Behn take 
vengeance upon political enemies, to the infinite delight of loyal 
audiences. How the Whig knights ever kept their own against 
the assaults made on them in plays, prologues, and epilogues, is, as 
Mr. Slick says, " a caution !" It is a fact, however, that these po- 
litical plays were far more highly relished than those which merely 
satirized passing social follies. Audiences roared at the dull jokes 
against the Oliverian knights, but they had no relish for the rhyme- 
loving Sir Hercules Buffoon, of Lacy. 

For one stage knight we may be said to be indebted to 
Charles II. himself. It was from a hint from him that Crowne 
wrote his " Sir Courtly Nice," produced at the Theatre Royal 
shortly after the death of Charles. Sir Courtly alludes to the 
death of one, and the accession of a new, king, in very flattering 
terms : — 

" What nation upon earth, besides our own, 
But by a loss like ours had been undone ? 
Ten ages scarce such royal worth display 
As England lost and found in one strange day." 

Of all the comedies with knights for their heroes, this one of Sir 
Courtly Nice retained a place longest on the stage. The hero was 
originally played by handsome, but hapless Will Mountfort. Cib- 
ber played it at the Haymarket in Queen Anne's time, 1706, and 
again at Drury Lane, and before George I. at Hampton Court. 
Foote and Cibber, jun., and Woodward, were there presentatives 
of the gallant knight, and under George II. Foote played it, for 
the first time, at Drury Lane, and the younger Cibber at Covent 
Garden, in 1746, and Woodward, at the latter house, in 1751. 
The last-named actor was long the favorite representative of the 
gentlemanly knight, retaining the character as his own for full 
a quarter of a century, and being succeeded, but not surpassed in 
it, by sparkling Lewis, at Covent Garden, in 1781. 

The satire in this piece against the Puritans is of a more refined 
character than in any other play of the period ; and the contrast 
between the rash and ardent cavalier and the cautious Puritan is 



302 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

very fairly drawn. " Suppose I see not many vices, says the 
Roundhead, Testimony, " morality is not the thing. The heathens 
had morality ; and, forsooth, would you have your footman or your 
coachman to be no better than Seneca ?" This is really compli- 
mentary to the Cromwellians ; and there is but a good-natured 
dash of satire in the answer of Testimony, when asked what time 
of day it may be, that — " Truly, I do believe it is about four. I 
can not say it positively, for I would not tell a lie for the whole 
world." 

I find little worthy of notice in other dramatic pieces having 
knights for their heroes. Southeran produced one entitled, " Sir 
Anthony Love" at the Theatre Royal in 1691, for the purpose of 
showing oif Mrs. Mountfort as an errant lady in male attire. 

In the eighteenth century, the knights gave name to a few his- 
torical pieces not worth recording. The only exceptions are 
scarcely worthy of more notice. Dodsley's " Sir John Cockle at 
Court" made our ancestors, of George the Second's time, laugh at 
the sequel of the " King and the Miller of Mansfield ;" and " Sir 
Roger de Coverley" was made the hero of a pantomime at Covent 
Garden in 1746. By this time, however, the fashion was extinct 
of satirizing living politicians under knightly names. To detail 
the few exceptions to the rule would only fatigue the perhaps al- 
ready wearied reader. 

To what a low condition knight and squire could fall may be 
seen in the Sir Joseph Wittol and Captain Bluffe, in Congreve's 
comedy, the " Old Batchelor." The only redeeming point about 
this disreputable pair is, that, cowards and bullies as they are, 
they have both read a little. The Captain has dipped into history, 
and he remarks that " Hannibal was a pretty fellow in his day, it 
must be granted ; but, alas, sir ! were he alive now, he would be 
nothing ; nothing on the earth." Sir Joseph, the knight, in comi- 
tatu Bucks, has also indulged in a little reading, but that of a light- 
er sort than the Captain's. When the gallant Captain affects not 
to be frightened at the aspect of Sharper, and exclaims, " I am 
prepared for him now, and he shall find he might have safer 
roused a sleeping lion," the knight remarks, " Egad, if he should 
hear the lion roar, he'd cudgel him into an ass, and his primitive 
braying. Don't you remember the story in iEsop's Fables, Bully? 



STAGE KNIGHTS. 303 

Egad, there are good morals to be picked out of iEsop's Fables, 
let me tell you that ; and ' Reynard the Fox' too ;" to which the 
deboshed Captain can only reply, " D — n your morals !" as though 
he despised fiction when compared with history. 

Some of the stage knights are wonderfully great boasters, yet 
exceedingly dull fellows. I do not know that in the mouth of any 
one of them there is put so spirited a remark as the great Huniades 
made to Ulderick, Count of Sicily. The latter asked for a confer- 
ence with the great governor of Hungary. Huniades bade him 
come to the Hungarian camp. The offended Ulderick, in a great 
chafe, replied that it was beneath him to do such a thing, seeing 
that he was descended from a long line of princely ancestors; 
whereas Huniades was the first of his family who had ever been 
raised to honor. The Hungarian very handsomely remarked, " I 
do not compare myself with your ancestors ; but with you /" This 
'has always appeared to me as highly dramatic in spirit. There 
is nothing half so spirited in the knightly pieces brought on the 
stage during the reign of George III., and which caused infinite 
delight to very easily-pleased audiences. It is well known that 
the good-natured Sovereign of England, although unassuming in 
his domestic character, was exceedingly fond of display in public 
ceremonies. He used to arrange the paraphernalia of an installa- 
tion of the Garter with all the energy and care of an anxious stage- 
manager. The people generally were as anxious to have an idea 
of the reality. On one occasion, in the preceding reign, they so 
nearly forced their way into the banqueting-room, where the 
knights were holding festival, that the troops fired over their heads 
in order to frighten them into dispersing, Under George III. 
they were more content to view these splendors through a dramatic 
lens. 

In 1771, accordingly, the splendors of the then late installation 
of the Garter were reproduced on the stage, in a masque, called 
" The Institution of the Garter, or Arthur's Round Table Re- 
stored." The show was as good as the piece was bad. The for- 
mer was got up to profit the managers, the latter to flatter or do 
homage to the King and Queen. It was at once cumbersome and 
comic. A trio of spirits opened the delectable entertainment by 
summoning other spirits from every nook and corner of the skies, 



304 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

the moon's horns included, to the work of escorting the car of the 
Male Genius of England, the husband probably of Britannia, down 
to earth. Nothing can exceed the alacrity with which the spirits 
and bards of the empyreal heaven obey the summons. They de- 
scend with the car of the Genius, singing a heavy chorus, ponder- 
ous as the chariot they help to "waft down," — in which, not the 
chariot, but the chorus, there is the assurance that 

" The bliss that spotless patriots feel 
Is kindred to the bliss above," — 

so that we may hope, though we can not feel certain, that there are 
some few persons here below, who are not unconscious of an ante- 
past of heaven. 

The Genius is a civil and polished personage, who with due re- 
membrance to metropolitan fogs, very courteously apologizes to 
the spirits, that he has been the cause of bringing them down 

" To this grosser atmosphere awhile." 

After such celestial compliments as these, he despatches them to 
shed heavenly influences over Windsor, wdrile he remains to hold 
a little colloquy with the Druids, " Britain's old philosophers," as he 
calls them. He adds an assertion that may, probably, have start- 
led the Society of Antiquaries of that day, namely, that the afore- 
said Druids — ■ 

" Still enamored of their ancient haunts, 
Unseen of mortal eyes, do hover round 
Their ruined altars and their sacred oaks," 

which may account for that loose heterodoxy which marked the pe- 
riod when Druids exercised these unseen influences. 

The Genius requests the Druids to have the kindness to repair 
to Windsor, where the order is hi the act of being founded by Ed- 
ward, and there direct his choice in the selection of members. 
This is a very heathenish idea, but Druids and Bards are alike 
delighted at it ; for, as the Genius remarks, Edward's perspicuity, 
his intellectual eyes, needed charming 



STAGE KNIGHTS. 305 

" from the mists 
It haply hath contracted from a long 
Unebbing current of prosperity." 

The heathen priests are flaming patriots, and express their eager- 
ness to leave Heaven for England, seeing that the new order may 
be the means to propagate 

" The sovereignty of England, and erect 
Her monarchs into judges of mankind." 

As this expressed end has not been accomplished, and the order 
has not propagated the sovereignty of England, we may logically 
conclude that the Druids themselves hardly knew much of the 
subject upon which they were singing to their tuneless harps. 
Meanwhile, the first Bard, in a bass song, petitions the south 
gales to blow very mildly, and bring blue skies and sweet 
smells to the installation. 

The ceremony of the installation then opens to the view when 
all the knights have been created, except the King's son, Edward 
the Black Prince, who really was not created knight when the 
order was founded. How far the Druids have succeeded in in- 
fluencing the choice of the King, there is no possibility of know- 
ing. No one utters a word, save royal father and son : and the 
commonplace prose which they deliver does not give us a very 
exalted idea of the Druidic inspiration. The old sages them- 
selves, however, are perfectly satisfied with the result ; and in a 
noisy chorus, they make an assertion which might well have 
frightened the Archbishop of Canterbury — had he cared about 
the matter. After vaticinating that the name of the Prince 
should roll down through the tide of ages, they add, that glory- 
shall fire him, and virtue inspire him, 

" Till blessed and blessing, 
Power possessing, 
From earth to heav.en he lifts his soul," — 

a feat which one would like to see put upon canvass by a Pre- 
Raphaelite. 

While the Knights are supposed to be preparing to pass to the 
hall, the scene takes us to the front of the castle, where crowds 

20 



306 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. • 

of liege and loyal people are assembled. First Citizen, " very 
like a whale indeed," sings a comic song, which, as a specimen 
of the homage offered to monarch and consort, more than four- 
score years ago, is worth transcribing — for both its imagery and 
syntax : — 

" Oh, the glorious installation ! 

Happy nation ! 
You shall see the King and Queen : 

Such a scene ! 

Valor he, sir ; 

Virtue she, sir ; 
Which our hearts will ever win. 

Sweet her face is, 

With such graces 
Show what goodness dwells within. 

" Oh, the glorious installation ! 

Happy nation ! 
You shall see the noble knights : 

Charming sights ! 

Feathers wagging, 

Velvet dragging, 
Trailing, sailing, on the ground ; 

Loud in talking, 

Proud in walking, 
Nodding, ogling, smirking round/' 

The banquet over, and more comic business, as dreary as the 
song above quoted, being concluded, King Edward walks forth 
into the garden for refreshment — and there the Genius of Eng- 
land takes him by the hand. Edward, we are sorry to say, knows 
so little of this Genius, that he boldly asks Mm, " What art thou, 
stranger ?" We should, only with reluctance, trouble our readers 
with all this unrecognised Genius says in reply to the royal in- 
quirer, but one passage may be transcribed to show what the 
popular spirit was thought to be in the last century. 

" Know that those actions which are great and good, 
Receive a nobler sanction from the free 
And universal voices from all mankind, 
Which is the voice of Heaven, than from the highest, 
The most illustrious act of royal power." 



STAGE KNIGHTS. 307 

This maxim of the Genius of England further shows that the 
individual in question not only passed off prose for blank verse, 
but stole the phrase of " Vox populi vox Dei," and tried to render 
it unrecognisable by indefinite extension. 

That the sentiment is not very much to the taste of the Mon- 
arch may be conjectured from the fact that he sulkily lets it pass 
without any comment, and very naturally falls asleep of being 
talked-at by so heavily-pinioned a Genius. The latter avails 
lmnself of the opportunity to exhibit to the slumbering Monarch 
a vision of the future of England, down to the era of George 
and Charlotte. The spectacle soothes him still less than the 
speech, though oppressive ecstacy may be sweet, and Edward 
springs into wakefulness, and loudly exclaiming that 

" This is too much for ham an strength to bear," 

the loquacious Genius flies at him again with some remarkable 
figures of speech, to which the worn-out Edward answers nothing. 
The Genius, unwilling to attribute his taciturnity to rudeness, finds 
a satisfactory solution in the conclusion that 

"Astonishment seals up his lips." 

The founder of the " Garter" will not provoke the eloquence 
of the heavenly visiter by unsealing the lips which astonishment 
is supposed to have sealed up, and the remainder of the piece is 
left to Genius and chorus, who unite in a musical asseveration, to 
the effect that the reigning Sovereign of England is 

" The great miracle on earth, a patriot king," 

and so terminates, amid the most vociferous plaudits, the scenic 
story of the Garter, enacted in celebration of the great installa- 
tion of 1771. 

The real installation was, by far, a more cheerful matter than 
its theatrical counterfeit. It took place on the 25th of July. At 
this ceremony the King raised to the dignity of Knights of the 
illustrious order, his sons the Prince of Wales and the Bishop of 
Osnaburg, his brother the Duke of Cumberland, with the Queen's 
brother, the Duke of Mecklenburgh, and Prince Henry of Bruns- 



308 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

wick, the Dukes of Marlborough and Grafton, and the Earls of 
Gower and Albermarle. The festival occupied the entire day. 
Four mortal hours in the morning were consumed in making the 
Knights, after which Sovereign and chapter dined together in St. 
George's Hall. While the banquet was progressing, Queen 
Charlotte sat in a gallery, looking on. She was brilliantly sur- 
rounded, and had at her right side the pretty Princess Eoyal, and 
the infant Prince Ernest at her left. One of her Majesty's 
brothers stood by each royal child. On the right of the canopy 
under which the King dined, was a long table, at which were 
seated all the Knights, in full view of the occupants of raised 
seats and a gallery in front. At the end of the first course, the 
good-natured Monarch was determined to make a Knight Bache- 
lor of some deserving individual present, and he rendered good 
Mr. Dessac (clerk of the check, belonging to the band of Gentle- 
men Pensioners) supremely happy by selecting him. As soon as 
the other courses had been served, and the banquet was conclu- 
ded, which was not till between six and seven o'clock, the whole 
of the cavaliers and company separated in haste, hurrying to 
their respective rooms or hotels, to dress for the ball which was 
to be held in the Great Guard-Poom. When all the guests were 
there assembled, the King and Queen entered the apartment about 
nine o'clock. Whereupon the Duke of Gloucester danced a couple 
of minuets with a brace of duchesses — Graften and Marlborough. 
The minuets were continued till eleven o'clock. No one seemed 
to tire of the stately, graceful dance, and it was only during 
the hour that followed, that any young lady, as anxious as the 
elegant American belle, who told Mr. Oliphant at Minnesota 
that " she longed to shake the knots out of her legs," had a chance 
of indulging in her liveliness. During one hour — from eleven 
to midnight — country dances were accomplished. I say accom- 
plished, for only three were danced — and each set procured 
twenty minutes of very active exercise. Midnight had scarcely 
been tolled out by the castle clock when the festive throng sepa- 
rated — and thus closed one of the most brilliant installations that 
Windsor had ever seen, since Edward first became the founder of 
the order. If there was any drawback to the gratification whieh 
the King felt on this occasion, it was at beholding Wilkes and his 



STAGE KNIGHTS. 309 

daughter conspicuously seated among the spectators in the court- 
yard ; whither the man whom the King hated had penetrated by 
means of a ticket from Lord Tankerville. It was at this period that 
Mr. Fox revived, for a few court-days, the fashion of appearing 
at the drawing-room in red-heeled shoes. To the public, these 
matters were far more comic than the comic portion of the " In- 
stallation," in which (setting aside the Edward III. of Aikin, and 
the Genius of England, played by Reddish) King enacted Sir 
Dingle, a court fool knighted ; Parsons, Nat Needle ; and Weston, 
Roger. Never was foolish knight played by an actor so chival- 
rous of aspect as King. 

I will avail myself of this opportunity to state that at solemn 
ceremonies, like that above named, four of our kings of England 
were knighted by their own subjects. These were Edward III., 
Henry VI. and VII., and Edward VI. The latter was dubbed 
by the Lord Protector, who was himself empowered to perform 
the act by letters patent, under the great seal. At a very early 
period, priests, or prelates rather, sometimes conferred the honor 
on great public occasions. The Westminster Synod deprived them 
of this privilege in 1102. 

It has been said that English knights wearing foreign orders, 
without permission of their own sovereign, are no more knights 
in reality than those stage knights of whom I have been treating. 
This, however, is questionable, if so great an authority as Coke 
be not in error. That great lawyer declares that a knight, by 
whomsoever created, can sue and be sued by his knightly title, 
and that such is not the case with persons holding other foreign 
titles, similar to those of the English peerage. Let me add that, 
among other old customs, it was once common in our armies for 
knighthood to be conferred previous to a battle, to arouse courage, 
rather than afterward, as is the case now — after the action, in 
order to reward valor. Even this fashion is more reasonable than 
that of the Czar, who claps stars and crosses of chivalry on the 
bosoms of beaten generals, to make them pass in Muscovy for 
conquerors. 

In connection with the stage, knights have figured sometimes 
before, as well as behind the curtain. Of all the contests ever 
maintained, there was never, in its way a fiercer than that which 



310 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIK DAYS. 

took place between Sir "William Rawlings, and young Tom Dibclin 
The son of "tuneful Charlie," born in 1771, and held at the font, 
as the " Lady's Magazine" used to say, by Garrick, was not above 
four years of age when he played Cupid to Mrs. Siddons' Venus, 
in Shakespeare's Jubilee. It was hardly to be expected that after 
this and a course of attendance as choir-boy at St. Paul's, he would 
settle down quietly to learn upholstery. This was expected of 
him by his very unreasonable relatives, who bound him appren- 
tice to the city knight, Sir William Rawlings, a then fashionable 
upholsterer in Moorfields. The boy was dull as the mahogany he 
had to polish, and the knight could never make him half so bright 
in business matters. " Tom Dibdin," thus used to remark the city 
cavalier — "Tom Dibdin is the stupidest hound on earth!" The 
knight, however, changed his mind when his apprentice, grown up 
to man's estate, produced " The Cabinet." Sir William probably 
thought that the opera was the upholstery business set to music. 
But before this point was reached, dire was the struggle between 
the knight and the page, who would not " turn over a new leaf." 
When work was over, the boy was accustomed to follow it up with 
a turn at the play — generally in the gallery of the Royalty 
Theatre. On one of these occasions the knight followed him 
thither, dragged him out, gave him a sound thrashing, and, next 
morning, brought him before that awfully squinting official, John 
Wilkes. The struggle ended in a drawn battle, and Tom aban- 
doned trade : and instead of turning out patent bedsteads, turned 
out the " English Fleet," and became the father of " Mother 
Goose." He would have shown less of his relationship to the 
family of that name, had he stuck to his tools ; in the latter case 
he might have taken his seat as Lord Mayor, in a chair made by 
himself, and in those stirring times he might have become as good 
a knight as his master. 

As it was, the refuse of knighthood had a hard time of it. He 
was actor of all work, wrote thousands of songs, which he sold as 
cheap as chips, and composed four pieces for Astley's Theatre, for 
which he received fourteen pounds — hardly the price of a couple 
of arm-chairs. How he flourished and fell after this, may be seen 
in his biography. He had fortune within his grasp at one time, 
but he lost his hold when he became proprietor of a theatre. The 



STAGE KNIGHTS. 311 

ex-apprentice of the old knight-upholder dould not furnish his 
own house with audiences, and the angry knight himself might 
have been appeased could his spirit have seen the condition into 
which " poor Tom" had fallen just previous to his death, some 
twenty years ago. 

But I fear I have said more than enough about stage knights ; 
may I add some short gossip touching real knights with stage 
ladies ? Before doing so, I may just notice that the wedded wife 
of a bona fide knight once acted on the English boards under the 
chivalric name — and a time-honored one it is in Yorkshire — of 
her husband, Slingsby. Dame, or Lady Slingsby, who had been 
formerly a Mrs. Lee, was a favorite actress in the days of James 
II. She belonged to the Theatre Royal, resided in St. James's 
parish, and was buried in Pancras church-yard in March 1693-4. 
In the list of the Slingsbys, baronets, of Scriven, given in Har- 
borough's " History of Knaresborough," Sir Henry Slingsby, who 
died in 1692, is the only one of whose marriage no notice is taken* 
But to our stage ladies and gallant lovers. 



312 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS 



STAGE LADIES AND THE ROMANCE OF HISTORY. 

" Our happy love may hare a secret church, 
Under the church, as Faith's was under Paul's, 
Where we may carry on our sweet devotion, 
And the cathedral marriage keep its state, 
And all its decencies and ceremonies." 

Ceowne, The Married Beau. 

After the loose fashion of Master Crowne's Married Beau, it 
was no uncommon thing for gallants once to woo the mimic ladies 
of the scene. 

From the time that ladies first appeared upon the stage, they 
seem to have exercised a powerful attraction upon the cavaliers. 
Under date of the 18th October, 1666, Evelyn says in his Diary: 
" This night was acted my Lord Broghill's tragedy, ' Mustapha,' 
before their majesties at court, at which I was present, very seldom 
going to the public theatres, for many reasons, now, as they are 
abused to an atheistical liberty, foul and undecent women now 
(and never till now) permitted to appear and act, who, inflaming 
several young noblemen and gallants, became their misses, and to 
some their wives ; witness the Earl of Oxford, Sir R. Howard, 
Prince Rupert, the Earl of Dorset, and another greater person 
than any of them, who fell into their snares, to the reproach of 
their noble families, and ruin of both body and soul. I was in- 
vited by my Lord Chamberlain to see this tragedy, exceedingly 
well written, though in my mind I did not approve of any such 
pastime in a time of such judgments and calamities." 

A year and a half earlier than the date of the above entry, 
namely, April 3, 1665, Pepys notices the same play, with some 
allusions to the ladies : " To a play at the Duke's of my Lord 
Orrery's, called ' Mustapha,' which being not good, made Better- 
ton's part and Ianthe's but ordinary too. All the pleasure of the 
play was, the king and my Lady Castlemaine were there ; and 



STAGE LADIES AND THE ROMANCE OF HISTORY. 313 

pretty witty Xell of the King's House, and the younger Marshall 
sat next as, which pleased me mightily." The play, however, is 
not so poor a one as Pepys describes it, and the cast was excel- 
lent. Betterton played Solyman the Magnificent. Mustapha and 
Zanga, the sons of Solyman, were played by Harris and Smith ; 
and Young made a capital Cardinal. Mrs. Betterton was the 
Poxalana ; and Mrs. Davies, one of those ladies who, like her 
sisters, the two Marshalls, Hughes and Xelly, exercised the fatal 
attraction over young noblemen and gallants, deplored by Evelyn, 
was the magnificent Queen of Hungary. Mustapha continued to 
be the favorite play until the theatre closed, when the plague began 
to spread. Pepys's •• Ianthe" was Mrs. Betterton, of whom he 
says, on the 22d October, 1662, "the players do tell me that Bet- 
terton is not married to Ianthe, as they say ; but also that he is a 
very sober, serious man, studious and humble, following of his 
studies, and is rich already with what he gets and saves." Bet- 
terton, however, married the lady, Miss Saunderson, in 1663. 
She had been famous for her Ianthe in Davenants " Siege of 
Rhodes ;" and she played Shakespeare's heroines with great effect. 
Pepys rightly designates the author of the play, Lord Orrery. 
Lord Broghill was made Earl of Orrery, five years before Evelyn 
saw his play. I may add that Mustapha has appeared in half-a- 
dozen different versions on the stage. Probably the worst of these 
was Mallet's ; the latter author created great amusement by one 
of his passages, in which he said : — 

" Future sultans 
Have shunned the marriage tie ;" — 

a confusion of tenses which has been compared with a similar 
error in the sermons of so correct a writer as Blair (vol. v., third 
edition, page 224), "in future periods the light dawned more and 
more." 

Although Evelyn, in 1666, says that '"'never till now" were 
women admitted to assume characters on the stage, he is not quite 
correct in his assertion. There were actresses full thirty years 
previous to that period. Thus, in 1632, the " Court Beggar" was 
acted at the Cockpit. In the last act, Lady Strangelove says : — 
•• If you have a short speech or two, the boy's a pretty actor, and 



314 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

his mother can play her part : women-actors now grow in request." 
Our ancestors wisely followed a foreign fashion when they ceased 
to employ boys in female characters. Prynne says, in 1633, 
" They have now their female players in Italy and other foreign 
parts;" and in Michaelmas 1629, they had French women-actors 
in a play personated at Blackfriars, to which there was a great 
resort. Geneste quotes Freshwater as writing thus of French 
actresses in Paris, in 1629 : "Yet the women are the best actors ; 
they play their own parts, a thing much desired in England." 

In Davenant's patent for opening Lincoln's-inn Fields, in 1661, 
permission was given for the engaging of women as actresses, on 
the ground that the employment of men in such parts had given 
great offence. I more particularly notice this matter, because it 
was a knight who first opened a theatre with a regular female 
troupe added to the usual number of male actors. Sir William's 
ladies were Mrs. Davenport, Mrs. Saunderson, Mrs. Davies, Mrs. 
Long, Mrs. Gibbs, Mrs. Norris, Mrs. Holden, and Mrs. Jennings. 
The first four were Sir William's principal actresses, and these 
were boarded in the knight's own dwelling-house. Their title of 
"Mistress" does not necessarily imply that they were married 
ladies, but rather that they were old enough to be so. 

This knight, too, was the first who introduced scenery on the 
stage. I will add {par parenthese) that it was a priest who first 
suggested the levelling of the pit with the stage, for the purpose 
of masquerades and balls. 

Prynne was not among those who fancied that morality would 
profit by the introduction of actresses. He had his misgivings as 
to the effects likely to be produced on the susceptible young gal- 
lants of his day. Touching the appearance of the French ac- 
tresses at the Blackfriars Theatre, noticed above, he calls it " an 
impudent, shameful, un-womanish, graceless, if not more than 

w ish attempt." The fashion was, undoubtedly, first set by 

the court, and by no less a person than a queen. Anne of Den- 
mark, wife of James I., acted a ■ part in a pastoral. They who 
remember some of the incidents of the training she gave her son, 
the princely knight young Henry, will hardly think that Anne 
gave dignity to the occupation she temporarily assumed. 

Mrs. Saunderson is said to have been the first regularly-engaged 



STAGE LADIES AND THE ROMANCE OP HISTORY. 315 

actress who opened her lips on the English stage. Had she and 
her compeers only half the charms which report ascribed to them, 
they must have afforded far more pleasure to audience and spec- 
tators than the " beautiful woman-actor," Stephen Hamerton Hart, 
with his womanly dignity ; Burt, with his odious female sprightli- 
ness ; or Goffe, who was as hearty and bustling as old Mrs. Dav- 
enport. King Charles himself and his cavaliers, too, must have 
been especially delighted when they were no longer kept waiting 
for the commencement of a play, on the ground that the Quee?\ 
was not yet shaved." 

It is curious that there were some people not near so strait-laced 
as Prynne, who considered that public virtue would suffer ship- 
wreck if actresses were permitted to establish themselves in the 
general favor. The opposite party, of course, went to an opposite 
extreme ; and in 1672, not only were " Philaster," and Killigrew's 
" Parson's Wedding," played entirely by women, but one of the 
" Miss" Marshalls, gay daughter of a Presbyterian minister, on 
both occasions spoke the prologue and epilogue in male attire. 
" Philaster" is simply an absurd piece, which was rendered pop- 
ular by Hart and Nell Gwyn ; but with respect to Killigrew's 
piece, it is so disgusting, from the commencement to the finale, 
that I can hardly fancy how any individuals, barely alive to their 
humanity, could be brought to utter and enact the turpitudes which 
Killigrew set down for them, or that an audience could be kept 
from fleeing from the house before the first act was over. 

But the gallants could endure anything rather than a return to 
such effects as are alluded to by a contemporary writer, who, by 
way of introducing a female Desdemona, said in his prologue — 

" Our women are defective and so sized 
You'd think they were some of the guard disguised ; 
For, to speak truth, men act that are between 
Eorty and fifty, wenches of fifteen ; 
"With brow so large, and nerve so uncompliant, 
When you call Desdemona — enter Giant." 

Half a century elapsed before knight or gentleman took an ac- 
tress from the stage, for the purpose of making her his wife. The 
squires, in this case, had precedence of the knights ; and the anti- 
quary, Martin Folkyes, led the way by espousing Lucretia Brad- 



316 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

shaw, the uncorrupted amid corruption, and the original Corinna 
in the " Confederacy," Dorinda in the " Beaux Stratagem," and 
Arabella Zeal in the " Fair Quaker of Deal." This marriage 
took place in 1713, and there was not a happier hearth in England 
than that of the antiquary and the actress. A knight of the Gar- 
ter followed, with an earl's coronet, and in 1735 the great Lord 
Peterborough acknowledged his marriage with that daughter of 
sweet sounds, Anastasia Robinson. This example at once nattered, 
provoked, and stimulated the ladies, one of whom, the daughter 
of Earl de Waldegrave, Lady Henrietta Herbert, married young 
Beard the actor. This was thought " low," and another knight's 
daughter was less censured for marrying her father's footman. 
The " Beggars' Opera" gave two coronets to two Pollys. Lavinia 
Fenton (Betswick), the original Polly at Lincoln's Inn, in 1728, 
became Duchess of Bolton a few years later; and in 1813, no 
less a man than Lord Thurlow married Mary Catherine Bolton, 
who was scarcely an inferior Polly to the original lady, who gave 
up Polly to become a Bolton. 

The squires once more took their turn when Sheridan married 
Miss Lindley ; but before the last century closed, Miss Farren 
gave her hand to " the proudest earl in England," the Earl of 
Derby, Knight of the Bath. In 1807, knight and squire took two 
ladies from the stage. In that year Mr. Heathcote married the 
beautiful Miss Searle ; and Earl Craven married Louisa Brunton. 
We have still among us five ex-actresses who married men of the 
degree of noble, knight, or squire. These are Miss Stephens, the 
widowed Countess of Essex ; Miss Foote, the widowed Countess of 
Harrington ; Miss O'Neill the widow of Sir William Beecher, Bart. ; 
Mrs. Nisbett, the relict of the bold Sir Felix Boothby ; and Miss 
M. Tree, whose late husband, Mr. Bradshaw, was at one time 
M. P. for Canterbury. 

There is something romantic in the lives of all these ladies, but 
most in that of ' ; Lizzy Farren," and as the life of that lady of a 
Knight of the Bath has something in common with the career of 
a celebrated legal knight and judge, I will take some of its inci- 
dents as the chief points in the following sketch, which is a sup- 
plementary chapter to the Romance of History, and perhaps not 
the least interesting one in such a series. 



STAGE LADIES AND THE ROMANCE OF HISTORY. 317 

If gayety consists in noise, then was the market-place of Salis- 
bury, toward the close of Christmas Eve, 1769, extremely joyous 
and glad. In the centre, on a raised stage, his Worship the May- 
or was inaugurating the holyday-time, by having a bout at single- 
stick with an itinerant exhibitor of the art of self-defence from 
London. The " professor" had been soliciting the magisterial 
permission to set up his stage in the market-place, and he had 
not only received full license, but the chief magistrate himself con- 
descended to take a stick and try his strength with the professor. 

It was an edifying sight, and bumpkins and burgesses enjoyed it 
consumedly. The professional fencer allowed his adversary to 
count many " hits" out of pure gratitude. But he had some self- 
respect, and in order that his reputation might not suffer in the 
estimation of the spectators, he wound up the " set-to" by dealing 
a stroke on the right-worshipful skull, which made the mayor im- 
agine that chaos was come again, and that all about him was 
dancing confusedly into annihilation. 

" I am afraid I have accidentally hurt your worship's head," 
said the wickedly sympathizing single-stick player. 

" H'm !" murmured the fallen great man, with a ghastly smile, 
and Iris's seven hues upon his cheek, " don't mention it : there's 
nothing in it !" 

'•' I am truly rejoiced," replied the professor to his assistant, 
with a wink of the eye, " that his worship has not lost his senses." 

" Oh, ay !" exclaimed the rough aide, " he's about as wise as 
ever he was." 

The single-stick player looked like Pizarro, who, when he did 
kill a friend occasionally— "his custom i' th' afternoon" — always 
went to the funeral in a mourning suit and a droop of the eye — 
intended for sympathy. In the meantime the mayor, who had 
been fancying himself in a balloon, and that he was being whirled 
away from his native town, began to think that the balloon was 
settling to earth again, and that the representation of chaos had 
been indefinitely deferred. He continued, however, holding on by 
the rail, as ifihe balloon was yet unsteady, and he only complained 
of a drumming in the ears. 

At that moment the not-to-be-mistaken sound of a real drum 
fell in harsh accompaniment upon his singing-ears, and it had one 



318 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

good effect, that of bringing back the magistrate and the man. 
Both looked through the rather shaken windows of the one body, 
and indignation speedily lighted up. from within. 

The sound came from the suburb of Fisherton, but it swelled 
insultingly nearer and nearer, as though announcing that it was 
about to be beaten in the borough, despite the lack of magisterial 
sanction. The great depository of authority began to gaze in 
speechless horror, as the bearer of the noisy instrument made 
his appearance in the market-place at the head of a small proces- 
sion, which was at once seen to consist of a party of strolling actors. 

The drummer was a thick-set man, with nothing healthy look- 
ing about him but his nose, and that looked too healthy. He was 
the low comedian, and was naturally endowed to assume that dis- 
tinctive line. 

He was followed by three or four couple of " the ladies and gen- 
tlemen of the company," of some of whom it might be said, that 
shoes were things they did not much stand upon. They had a 
shabby genteel air about them, looked hungry and happy ; and 
one or two wore one hand in the pocket, upon an economizing 
principle in reference to gloves. The light comedian cut jokes 
with the spectators, and was soon invited to the consequence he 
aimed at — an invitation to "take a glass of wine." The women 
were more tawdry-looking than the men, but they wore a light- 
hearted, romping aspect — all, except the young lady who played 
Ophelia and Columbine, who carried a baby, and looked as if she 
had not been asleep since it was born, which was probably the case. 

The cortege was closed by a fine, gentleman-like man, who led 
by the hand a little girl some ten years old. No one could look 
for a moment at them, without at once feeling assured that there 
was something in them which placed them above the fellows with 
whom they consorted. They were father and daughter. He 
manager ; she a species of infant phenomenon. In his face were 
to be traced the furrows of disappointment, and in his eye the 
gleam of hope. Her face was as faces of the young should ever 
be, full of enjoyment, love, and feeling. The last two were espe- 
cially there for the father, whose hand she held, and into whose 
face she looked, ever and anon, with a smile which never failed to 
be repaid in similar currency. 



STAGE LADIES AND THE ROMANCE OF HISTORY. 319 

The refined air of the father, and the graceful bearing of the 
modest daughter, won commendations from all beholders. He 
was an ex-surgeon of Cork, who had given up his profession in 
order to follow the stage. People set him down as insane, and so 
he was, but it was an insanity which made a countess of his 
daughter. His name was Farren, and his child, pet daughter of 
a pretty mother, was the inimitable Lizzy. 

If the mayor could have read into history, he would have knelt 
down and kissed Lizzy Farren's shoe-buckles. As he could not 
so read, he only saw in the sire a vagabond, and in the child a 
mountebank. On the former he hurled down the whole weight 
of his magisterial wrath. It was in vain that the manager declared 
he was on his way to solicit the mayor's license to act in Salisbury. 
That official gentleman declared that it was an infraction of the 
law to pass from the suburb of Fisherton into the borough of 
Salisbury before the mayor's permission had been previously 
signified. 

"And that permission I will never give," said his worship. 
" "We are a godly people here, and have no taste for rascal-players. 
As his majesty's representative, I am bound to encourage no 
amusements that are not respectable." 

" But our young king," interrupted Mr. Farren, " is himself a 
great patron of the theatre." 

This was worse than a heavy blow at single-stick; and the 
mayor was the more wrath as he had no argument ready to meet 
it. After looking angry for a moment, a bright thought struck 
him. 

" Ay, ay, sir ! You will not, I hope, teach a mayor either fact 
or duty. We know, sir, what the king (God bless him !) patron- 
izes. His majesty does not patronize strollers. He goes regularly 
to an established church, sir, and to an established theatre ; and so, 
sir, I, as mayor, support only establishments. Good heavens ! 
what would become of the throne and the altar, if a Mayor of 
Sarum were to do otherwise ?" 

As Mr. Farren did not well know, he could not readily tell ; 
and as he stood mute, the mayor continued to pour down upon 
the player and his vocation, a shower of obloquy. At every al- 
lusion which he made to his predilection for amusements that were 



320 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

respectable and instructive, the single-stick player and his man 
drew themselves up, cried " Hear / hear /" and looked down upon 
the actors with an air of burlesque contempt. The actors, men 
and women, returned the look with a burst of uncontrollable 
laughter. The mayor took this for deliberate insult, aimed at him- 
self and at what he chose to patronize. His proteges looked the 
more proud, and became louder than ever in their self-applaudiug 
" Hear ! hear !" The players, the while, shrieked with laughter. 
Even Mr. Farren and Lizzy could not refrain from risibility, for 
the stick-player and his man were really members of the company. 
The former was Mr. Frederick Fitzmontague, who was great in 
Hamlet. His man was the ruffian in melodramas, and the clown 
in pantomimes, and as he did a little private business of his own 
by accepting an engagement from a religious society, during the 
dull season of the year, to preach on the highways against theatri- 
cals, Mr. Osmond Brontere was usually known by the cognomen 
of Missionary Jack. 

The magisterial refusal to license this wandering company to 
play in Salisbury, was followed by altercation ; and altercation by 
riot. The multitude took part with the actors, and they hooted 
the mayor ; and the latter, viewing poor Farren as the cause and 
guilty mover of all that had occurred, summarily ordered his ar- 
rest ; and, in spite of all remonstrance, resistance, or loudly-ex- 
pressed disgust, the manager was ultimately lodged in the cage. 
The mob, then, satisfied at having had a little excitement, and 
caring nothing more about the matter, at length separated, and re- 
paired to their respective homes. They went all the quicker that 
the rain had begun to descend in torrents ; and they took little no- 
tice of poor Lizzy, who went home in the dusk, weeping bitterly, 
and led by the hands of the matronly Ophelia and Missionary 
Jack. 

Ere morning dawned, a change had come over the scene. The 
rain had ceased. A hard frost had set in. All Salisbury looked 
as if it were built upon a frozen lake. The market-place itself 
was a mer de glace. Christmas-day was scarcely visible when a 
boy of early habits, standing at the door of an upholsterer's shop, 
which bore above it the name of Burroughs, fancied he saw some- 
thing moving with stealthy pace across the market-place ; and he 



STAGE LADIES AND THE ROMANCE OF HISTORY. 321 

amused himself by watching it through the gloom. It was devel- 
oped, after a while, into the figure of a thinly-clad girl, bearing in 
her arms a bowl of hot milk. She trod cautiously, and looked, 
now down at her feet, now across the wide square, to measure the 
distance she had yet to go. Each little foot was put forward with 
hesitation, and so slowly was progress made, that there was good 
chance of the boiling milk being frozen, before it had been carried 
half-way to its destination. 

The girl was Lizzy Farren, and in the bowl, which between her 
arms looked as graceful as urn clasped by Arcadian nymph, lay 
the chief portion of a breakfast destined, on this sad Christmas 
morning, for her captive sire in the cage. 

" She'll be down !" said young Burroughs, as he saw her par- 
tially slip. Lizzy, however, recovered herself; but so alarmed 
was she at her situation, so terrified when she measured the dis- 
tance she had to accomplish by that which she had already trav- 
ersed, that she fairly stood still near the centre of the market-place, 
and wept aloud over the hot bowl and her cold position. It was 
then that the young knight recognised the crisis when he was 
authorized to interfere. He made a run from the door, shot one 
leg in advance, drew the other quickly after him, and went sliding, 
with express-train speed, close up to Lizzy's feet. She no sooner 
saw the direful prospect of collision than she shrieked with an en- 
ergy which roused all the rooks in the close. 

u Hold hard !" exclaimed the merry-faced boy ; " hold hard ! 
that's myself, you Lizzy, and the milk. Hold hard !" he continued, 
as he half held her up, half held on to her. " Hold hard ! or we 
shall all be down together." 

" Oh, where do you come from ? and how do you know my 
name is Lizzy ?" 

" Well ! Mr. Fitzmontague lodges in our house, and he told us 
all about you, last night. And he said, as sure as could be, you 
would be awake before anybody in Salisbury. And sure enough, 
here you are, almost before daylight." 

By the help of the young cavalier, the distressed damsel was 
relieved from her perplexity. Young Burroughs offered to carry 
the bowl, which she stoutly refused. " No one," she said, " shall 
carry my father's breakfast to him, but myself, on such a morning." 

21 



322 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

And so, her deliverer walked tenderly by her side, holding her 
cautiously up, nor ceased from his care, until Lizzy and her burden 
had safely reached the cage. Through the bars of the small win- 
dow, Farren had watched her coming ; and he hailed her arrival 
with a " God bless you, my own child !" 

"Oh, papa!" said Lizzy, weeping again, and embracing the 
bowl as warmly as if it had been her father himself; " oh, papa ! 
what would mamma and my little sisters, and all our friends in 
Liverpool say, if they knew how we are beginning our Christmas 
day?" 

" Things unknown are unfelt, my darling. We will tell them 
nothing about it, till Fortune gilds over the memory of it. But 
what do you bring, Lizzy? — or rather, why do I ask? It is my 
breakfast ; and Lizzy herself has had none." 

A pretty altercation ensued ; but Lizzy gained her point ; and 
not one drop would she taste till her sire had commenced the re- 
past. Aided by young Burroughs,, she held the lip of the bowl 
through the bars of the cage ; and the little English maiden smiled, 
for the first time since yesterday, at beholding her sire imbibe the 
quickening draught. It was not till three years after that Barry 
and his wife played Evander and Euphrasia in the Grecian 
Daughter, or Farren would have drawn a parallel suitable to the 
occasion. He was not so well up in history as in theatricals ; and 
on the stage, history has a terrible time of it. Witness this very 
tragedy in which Murphy has made Evander, King of Sicily, and 
confounded Dionysius the elder, with his younger namesake. To 
be sure, pleasant Palmer, who played the character, was about as 
wise as Murphy. 

When the primitive breakfast was concluded, Lizzy stood sad 
and silent ; and the father sadly and silently looked down at her ; 
while young Burroughs leaned against the wall, as sad and silent 
as either of them. And so a weary two hours passed ; at the end 
of which, a town-constable appeared, accompanied by a clerical 
gentleman, and empowered to give liberty to the captive. When 
the constable told the manager that his liberation was owing to 
the intercession made in his behalf, by the Reverend Mr. Snod- 
grass, who had just arrived in Salisbury, Lizzy clapped her hands 
with agitation, for she saw that the clerical interceder was no other 



STAGE LADIES AND THE ROMANCE OF HISTORY. 323 

than Missionary Jack. " Oh, Mr. Brontere," said the carious girl, 
when they had all reached home together, " how did you ever 
manage it ?" 

" Well !" said the enterprising actor, with a laugh ; " I called on 
his worship, to inquire what Christmas charities might be accepta- 
ble ; and if there were any prisoners whom my humble means 
might liberate. He named your papa, and the company have 
paid what was necessary. His worship was not inexorable, par- 
ticularly as I incidentally told him his Majesty patronized, the 
other day, an itinerant company at Datchet. As for how I did it. 
I rather think I am irresistible in the dress in which poor Will 
Havard, only two years ago, played ' Old Adam.' A little inge- 
nuity, as you see, has made it look very like a rector's costume ; 
and, besides," said Missionary Jack, " I sometimes think that na- 
ture intended me for the church." 

Three years had elapsed. On the Christmas eve of 1772, all 
the play-going people of Wakefield were in a state of pleasant ex- 
citement, at the promise made in bills posted over the town an- 
nouncing the immediate appearance of the "Young Queen of 
Columbines." All the young bachelors of the town were besie- 
ging the box-office. In those days there were not only theatres in 
provincial towns, but people really went to them. Amid the ap- 
plicants, was a sprightly-looking articled clerk, who, having 
achieved his object, had stopped for a moment at the stage-door to 
read the programme of the forthcoming pantomime. While thus 
engaged the Columbine Queen, the most fairy-looking of youthful 
figures, brilliant as spring, and light as gossamer, sweet fifteen, 
with a look of being a year or two more, tripped into the street, 
on her way home from rehearsal. Eighty years ago the gallantry 
of country towns, with respect to pretty actresses, was much like 
that which characterizes German localities now. It was of a 
rudely enthusiastic quality. Accordingly, the fairy-looking Co- 
lumbine had hardly proceeded a dozen yards, when she had twice 
as many offers made her of arms, whereon to find support over 
the slippery pavement. It was an old-fashioned winter in Wake- 
field, and Columbine's suitors had as many falls in the course of 
their assiduities, as though they had been so many " Lovers" in 



324 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

the pantomime, and the wand of Harlequin was tripping them up 
as thej skipped along. Columbine got skilfully rid of them all in 
time, except one ; and he became at last so unwelcomely intrusive, 
that the articled clerk, who was the very champion of distressed 
damsels, and had been a watcher of what was going on, went up 
to the young lady, took her arm in his, without any ceremony, and 
bade her persecutor proceed any further, at his peril. The gen- 
tleman took the hint, and left knight and lady to continue their 
way unmolested. They no sooner saw themselves alone, when, 
looking into each other's faces, they laughed a merry laugh of rec- 
ognition, and it would be difficult to say which was the merrier — 
Miss Farren or Mr. Burroughs, the young actress and the incip- 
ient lawyer. 

"When boxing-night came, there was a crowded house, and 
Lizzy created a furore. Like Carlotta Grisi, she could sing as 
well as dance, and there was a bright intellect, to boot, pervading 
all she did. On the night in question, she sang between the acts ; 
and young Burroughs, ever watchful, especially marked the effect 
of her singing upon a very ecstatic amateur who was seated next 
to him. " What a treasure," said the amateur, " would this girl 
be in Liverpool !" " Well," remarked Burroughs, u I am ready 
to accept an engagement for her. State your terms. Thirty 
shillings a- week, I presume, will not quite exhaust your treasury." 
" I will certainly," said the stranger, " tell our manager, Younger, 
of the prize which is to be acquired so cheaply ; and the affair 
need not be delayed ; for Younger is at the Swan, and will be 
down here to-night, to see the pantomime." 

In five minutes, Burroughs was sitting face-to-face with Younger 
at the inn, urging him to go at once, not to see Columbine dance, 
but to hear her sing. " I wonder," said the manager, " if your 
young friend is the child of the Cork surgeon who married the 
daughter of Wright, the Liverpool brewer. If so, she's clever ; 
besides, why " 

"Why she'll make your fortune," said the lawyer's clerk. 
" She is the grand-daughter of your Liverpool brewer, sings like 
a nightingale, and is worth five pounds a week to you at least. 
Come and hear her." 

Younger walked leisurely down, as if he was in no particular 



STAGE LADIES AND THE ROMANCE OF HISTORY. olio 

want of talent ; but he was so pleased with what he did hear that 
when the songstress came off the stage, Burroughs went round 
and exultingly announced that he had procured an engagement 
for her at Liverpool, at two pounds ten per week ; and to find her 
own satin shoes and silk stockings. In prospect of such a Potosi, 
the Columbine danced that night as boundingly as if Dan Mercury 
had lent her the very pinions from his heels. 

" Mr. Burroughs," said Lizzy, as he was escorting her and her 
mother home, " this is the second Christmas you have made happy 
for us. I hope you may live to be Lord Chief Justice." 

" Thank you, Lizzy, that is about as likely as that Liverpool 
will make of the Wakefield Columbine a countess." 

A few years had again passed away since the Christmas week 
which succeeded that spent at Wakefield, and which saw Lizzy 
Farren the only Bosetta which Liverpool cared to listen to, and it 
was now the same joyous season, but the locality was Chester. 

There was a custom then prevailing among actors, which exists 
nowhere now, except in some of the small towns in Germany. 
Thus, not very long ago, at Ischl, in Austria, I was surprised to 
see a very pretty actress enter my own room at the inn, and 
putting a play-bill into my hand, solicit my presence at her bene- 
fit. This was a common practice in the north of England till 
Tate Wilkinson put an end to it, as derogatory to the profession. 
The custom, however, had not been checked at the time and in 
the locality to which I have alluded. On the Christmas eve of 
the period in question, Lizzy Farren was herself engaged in dis- 
tributing her bills, and asking patronage for her benefit, which 
was to take place on the following Twelfth Night. As appropri- 
ate to the occasion she had chosen Shakespeare's comedy of that 
name, and was to play Viola, a part for which Younger, who 
loved her heartily, had given her especial instruction. 

Miss Farren had not been very successful in her " touting." She 
had been unlucky in the two families at whose houses she had 
ventured to knock. The first was that of an ex-proprietor of a 
religious periodical, who had a horror of the stage, but who had 
a so much greater horror of Romanism, that, like the Scottish 
clergy of the time, he would have gone every night to the play 



326 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

during Passion week, only to show his abhorrence of popery. 
This pious scoundrel had grown rich by swindling his editors and 
supporting any question which paid best. His household he kept 
for years, by inserting advertisements in Ins journal for which 
he was paid in kind. He was a slimy, sneaking, mendacious 
knave, who would have advocated atheism if he" could have pro- 
cured a dozen additional subscribers by it. His lady was the 
quintessence of vulgarity and malignity. She wore diamonds on 
her wig, venom in her heart, and very-much-abused English at 
the end of her tongue. 

Poor Lizzy, rebuffed here, rang at the garden-gate of Mrs. 
Penury Beaugawg. She was a lady of sentiment who drank, a 
lady of simplicity who rouged, a lady of affected honesty who 
lived beyond her income, and toadied or bullied her relations into 
paying her debts. Mrs. Penury Beaugawg would have gracious- 
ly accepted orders for a private box ; but a patronage which cost 
her anything, was a vulgarity which her gentle and generous spirit 
could not comprehend. 

Lizzy was standing dispirited in the road at the front of the 
house, when a horseman rode slowly up ; and Lizzy, not at all 
abashed at practising an old but not agreeable custom, raised a 
bill to his hand as he came close to her, and solicited half-a-crown, 
the regular adinission-price to the boxes. 

" Lizzy !" cried the horseman, " you shall have such a house at 
Chester, as the old town has not seen since the night Garrick was 
here, and played Richard and Lord Chalkstone." 

The equestrian was Mr. Burroughs, then in training for 
the bar, and as willing to help Miss Farren now as he was 
to aid her and her bowl of milk across the market-place at 
Salisbury. The incipient barrister kept his word. The 
Chester theatre was crammed to the ceiling; and, as Lizzy 
said, Mr. Burroughs was her Christmas angel, the thought of 
whom was always associated in her mind with plumbs, currants, 
holly 

" And mistletoe," said the budding counsellor, with a look at 
which both laughed merrily and honestly. 

On the Christmas eve of 1776, Miss Farren was seated in 
Column's parlor in London, looking at him while he read two 



STAGE LADIES AND THE ROMANCE OP HISTORY. 827 

letters of introduction; one from Burroughs, the other from 
Younger ; and both in high praise of the young bearer, for whom 
they were especially written. My limits will only allow me to 
say that Lizzy was engaged for the next summer-season at the 
Haymarket, where she appeared on June 9, 1777, in " She Stoops 
to Conquer." She was Miss Hardcastle, and Edwin made his 
first appearance in London with her, in the same piece. Colman 
would have brought out Henderson too, if he could have managed 
it. That dignified gentleman, however, insisted on reserving Ins 
debut for Shylock, on the 11th of the same month. And what a 
joyous season did Lizzy make of it for our then youthful grand- 
fathers. How they admired her double talent in Miss Hardcas- 
tle I How ecstatic were they with her Maria, in the " Citizen !" 
How ravishedly did they listen to her Rosetta! How they 
laughed at her Miss Tittup, in " Bon Ton !" and how they ex- 
tolled her playfulness and dignity as Rosina, of which she was 
the original representative, in the " Barber of Seville !" It may 
be remarked that Colman omitted the most comic scene in the 
piece, that wherein the Count is disguised as a drunken trooper 
— as injurious to morality! 

When, in the following year, she played Lady Townley, she 
was declared the first, and she was then almost the youngest of 
living actresses. And when she joined the Drury Lane company 
in the succeeding season, the principal parts were divided between 
herself, Miss Walpole, Miss P. Hopkins, and Perdita Eobinson. 
Not one of this body was then quite twenty years of age ! Is 
not this a case wherein to exclaim — 

" mihi prseteritos referat si Jupiter annos V 

Just twenty years did she adorn our stage ; ultimately taking 
leave of it at Drury Lane, in April, 1797, in the character of 
Lady Teazle. Before that time, however, she had been promi- 
nent in the Christmas private plays at the Duke of Richmond's, 
in which the Earl of Derby, Lord Henry Fitzgerald, and the 
Honorable Mrs. Dormer acted with her ; and that rising barrister, 
Mr. Burroughs, looking constantly at the judicial bench as his 
own proper stage, was among the most admiring of the audience. 
It was there that was formed that attachment which ultimately 



328 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

made of her, a month after she had retired from the stage, Countess 
of Derby, and subsequently mother of a future countess, who still 
wears her coronet. 

Not long after this period, and following on her presentation 
at Court, where she was received with marked kindly conde- 
scension by Queen Charlotte, the countess was walking in the 
marriage procession of the Princess Royal and the Duke of 
Wurtemberg ; her foot caught in the carpeting, and she would have 
fallen to the ground, but for the ready arms, once more extended 
to support her, of Mr. Burroughs, now an eminent man indeed. 

Many years had been added to the roll of time, when a carriage, 
containing a lady was on its way to Windsor. It suddenly came 
to a stop, by the breaking of an axle-tree. In the midst of the 
distress which ensued to the occupier, a second carriage ap- 
proached, bearing a goodnatured-looking gentleman, who at once 
offered his services. The lady, recognising an old friend, accept- 
ed the offer with alacrity. As the two drove off together in 
the gentleman's carriage toward Windsor, the owner of it re- 
marked that he had almost expected to find her in distress on 
the road ; for it was Christmas Eve, and he had been thinking 
of old times. 

" How many years is it, my lady countess," said he, u since I 
stood at my father's shop-door hi Salisbury, watching your perilous 
passage over the market-place, with a bowl of milk ?" 

" Not so long at all events," she answered with a smile, " but 
that I recollect my poor father would have lost his breakfast, but 
for your assistance." 

" The time is not long for memory," replied the Judge, " nor is 
Salisbury as far from Windsor as Dan from Beersheba ; yet how 
wide the distance between the breakfast at the cage-door at Salis- 
bury, and the Christmas dinner to which we are both proceeding, 
in the palace of the king !" 

" The earl is already there," added the countess, " and he will 
be happier than the king himself to welcome the legal knight who 
has done such willing service to the Lady of the Knight of the 
Bath." 

To those whose power and privilege it is to create such knights, 
we will now direct our attention, and see how kings themselves 
behaved in their character as knights. 



THE KINGS OF ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS. 



THE KINGS OF ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS. 

FROM THE NORMANS TO THE STUARTS. 

" Un roi abstrait n'est ni pere, ni fils, ni frere, ni parent, ni chevalier, 
ami. Qu'est il done ? JRoi, merae quand il dort." — Diderot. 

If we judge some of our kings by the strict laws of chivalry, 
we shall find that they were but sorry knights after all. They 
may have been terrible in battle ; but they were ill-mannerly in 
ladies' bower. 

William the Conqueror, for instance, had none of the tender senti- 
ment of chivalry ; in other words he showed little gentleness in his 
bearing toward women. It is said by Ingerius, that after Matilda of 
Flanders had refused his hand, on the ground that she would not have 
a bastard for a husband, he waylaid her as she was returning from 
mass in one of the streets of Bruges, dragged her out from among 
her ladies, pommelled her brutally, and finally rolled her in the 
mud. A little family difference arose in consequence ; but as it 
was less bitter than family quarrels usually are, a reconciliation 
took place, and Matilda gave her hand to the knight who had so 
terribly bruised her with his arm. She loved him, she said, be- 
cause he had shown more than the courage of common knights, by 
daring to beat her within sight of her father's own palace. But 
all's well that ends well ; they were not only a handsome but a 
happy couple, and Matilda was head of the household at the Con- 
queror's hearth. The general's wife was there the general. 

How William bore himself in fight is too well known to need 
recapitulating here. He probably never knew fear but once, and 
that was at the sounds of a tumult in the street, which reached his 
ears as he was being crowned. Then, indeed, "'tis true this god 



330 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

did shake," for the first and only time. His successor, who was 
knighted by Archbishop Lanfranc, was in the field as good a 
knight as he, and generous to an adversary, although he was never 
so to any mortal besides. But Rufus was nothing of a knight in 
his bearing toward ladies. His taste with regard to the fair sex 
was of the worst sort ; and the court of this royal and reprobate 
bachelor was a reproach at once to kingship and knighthood, to 
Christianity and civilization. He had been accused, or rather the 
knights of his time and country, with having introduced into Eng- 
land the practice of a crime of which the real introducer, according 
to others, was that Prince William who was drowned so fortunately 
for England, on the sea between Calais and Dover. The chival- 
rous magnanimity of Rufus is exemplified in the circumstance of his 
having, in disguise, attacked a cavalier, from whom he received so 
sound a beating, that he was at length compelled to avow himself 
in order to induce his conqueror to spare his life. The terrified 
victor made an apology, in the very spirit of the French knight 
of the Holy Ghost to a dying cavalier of the Golden Spur, whom 
he had mortally wounded in mistake : " I beg a thousand par- 
dons," said the polite Frenchman, " but I really took you for some- 
body else." So William's vanquisher began to excuse himself for 
having nearly battered the king's skull to a jelly, with his battle- 
axe, on the ground of his having been unacquainted with his rank. 
" Never heed the matter," said the king, " you are a good fellow, 
and shall, henceforth, be a follower of mine." Many similar in- 
stances might be cited. Further, Rufus was highly popular with 
all men-at-arms ; the knights reverenced him as the very flower 
of chivalry, and I am glad that the opprobrium of having slain 
him in the New Forest no longer attaches itself to a knight, al- 
though I am sorry an attempt has been made to fix it upon the 
church. No one now believes that Sir Walter Tyrrel was the 
author of the crime, and chivalry is acquitted of the charge against 
one of its members of having slain the flaxen-haired but rubicund- 
nosed king. 

Henry Beauclerc was more of a scholar than a knight, without, 
however, being so very much of the first. The English-born 
prince was far less chivalrous of spirit than his former brother 
Robert ; that is, if not less brave, he was less generous, especially 



THE KINGS OF ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS. 331 

lo a foe. When he was besieged on St. Michael's Mount by 
Robert, and reduced to such straits, that he was near dying of thirst, 
Robert supplied him with water ; an act for which Rufus called 
the doer of it a fool ; but as poor Robert nobly remarked, the 
quarrel between him and their brother was not of such importance 
that he should be made to perish of thirst. " We may have oc- 
casion," said he, " for a brother hereafter ; but where shall we find 
one, if we now destroy this ?" Henry would hardly have imi- 
tated conduct so chivalrously generous. He was more knightly 
in love, and it is recorded to his honor, that he married Matilda, 
daughter of Malcolm, King of Scotland, for pure love, and not for 
" filthy lucre," preferring to have her without a marriage portion, 
than to wait till one could be provided for her. This would have 
been praiseworthy enough had Henry not been, subsequently, like 
many other persons who marry in haste — for ever looking for 
pecuniary assistance from other resources than his own. He 
especially lacked too what was enjoined on every knight, a love 
of truth. His own promises were violated with alacrity, when 
the violation brought profit. He wanted, too, the common virtue 
of fidelity, which men of knightly rank were supposed to possess 
above all others. The fact that fifteen illegitimate children sur- 
vived him, speaks little for his respect for either of his consorts, 
Matilda of Scotland, or Adelicia of Louvain. Generally speak- 
ing, however, the character of the royal scholar may be described 
in any terms, according to the view in which it is taken. With 
some historians, he is all virtue, with others all vice. 

Stephen had more of the knightly character about him. He 
was an accomplished swordsman, and loved the sound of battle as 
became the spirit of the times, which considered the king as the 
first knight in the land. He had as little regard as Henry for a 
sense of justice when disposed to seize upon that to which he had 
no right, but he was incontestably brave, as he was indefensibly 
rash. Stephen received the spurs of knighthood from his uncle, 
Henry I., previous to the battle of Tinchebray ; and in that fray 
he so bore himself as to show that he was worthy of the honor 
that had been conferred upon him. But Stephen was as faithless 
to his marriage vow as many other belted knights, and Matilda of 
Boulogne had to mourn over the faithlessness of one who had 



382 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

sworn to be faithful. It is said, too, of this king that he always 
went into battle terribly arrayed. This was in the spirit of those 
birds that raise their crests to affright their enemies. 

Henry II., like his brother kings, we can only consider in his 
character of knight. In this character he is almost unexception- 
able, which is more than can be said of him generally as king or 
as man. He was brave and generous, two chief characteristics 
of knighthood. He it was who abolished that burdensome and 
unprofitable feudal military service, which brought the barons or 
military tenants into the field, for forty days. The camp conse- 
quently abounded in unskilful and disorderly men. Henry ac- 
cordingly introduced the practice of commuting their military ser- 
vice for money, by levying scutages from his baronies and knights- 
fees, or so much for every shield or bearer of it that should attend 
but had purchased exemption. 

Henry II., not only loved knightly practice himself, but he 
loved to see his sons exercising knight-errantry, and wandering 
about in disguise from court to court, displaying their prowess in 
tournaments, and carrying off prizes from all adversaries. To the 
stories of these adventures of his by no means exemplary sons he 
would listen with delight. He was himself, however, a sire who 
set but indifferent example to his children ; and his two sons, of 
whom fair Rosamond was the mother, were brought up and edu- 
cated with his children by Eleanor. He received much knightly 
service and true affection from his illegitimate children. TVilliain, 
Earl of Salisbury, is known by his chivalric surname of " Long- 
sword," but Geoffrey, Bishop of Lincoln, the second son of Henry 
and Rosamond, was not the less a knight for being a bishop before 
he was twenty. It was this prelate who, at the head of an armed 
force put down the first great northern insurrection. He was on 
his triumphant way back, at the head of one hundred and forty 
knights, when he was met by his royal sire, w T ho embraced him 
warmly, exclaiming the while, " Thou alone art my legitimate 
son, the rest are all bastards." That he himself could endure 
much was evinced when he submitted to correction at the shrine 
of Becket. He was flagellated by the prelates, abbots, bishop, and 
eighty monks ; and the first refreshment he took after the long pen- 
ance, was some water in which a portion of Becket's blood was min- 



THE KINGS OP ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS. 333 

gled. His claim to be considered chivalrous never suffered, in the 
mind of the church at least, because of this humiliating submission. 

But in the dissensions which led to this humiliation, the church 
incurred perhaps more disgrace than the king. Nothing could 
possibly be more disgraceful than the conduct of the pope and 
the diplomacy of the Roman government throughout the continua- 
tion of the quarrel between Becket and the king. Double-dealing, 
atrocious deceit, and an unblushing disregard for truth, marked 
every act of him who was looked upon as the spiritual head of 
Christendom. Comparing Becket with the king, it is impossible to 
avoid coming to the conclusion that, in many of the requirements 
of knighthood, he was superior to the sovereign. His death, that is 
the way in which he met it, was sublime. Throughout the great 
quarrel, of which that death was a consequence, Becket never, 
like Henry, in his moments of defeat and discouragement, gave 
way to such impotent manifestations of rage as were shown by his 
royal antagonist. The latter forgot the dignity, not only of knight, 
but of manhood, when he was seen casting his cap violently to the 
earth, flinging away his belt, tearing his clothes from his body, and 
dragging the silk coverlet from his bed, on which, in presence of 
his captains, he rolled himself like a maniac, grasping the mattress 
in his mouth, and gnawing the wool and the horsehair which he 
drew out with his teeth. 

Richard I. has a brilliant reputation as a knight, and if valor 
were the only virtue required, he would not be undeserving of the 
pre-eminence which is claimed for him. But this was his sole 
virtue. Of the other qualifications for, or qualities of chivalry, 
he knew nothing, or little cared for them. He was faithless in 
love ; regardless of his pledged word ; cruel, extravagant, dishon- 
est ; and not even always brave, when away from the clamor and 
excitements of war. But John lacked the one rough quality of 
Richard, and was not even brave — that is to say, he was not distin- 
guishedly brave. When he stole away Isabella of Angouleme from 
her first lover, Sir Hugh de Lusignan, it was not done with the 
dashing gallantry of Young Lochinvar. John, in fact, was a shabby 
and recreant knight ; and when stout Sir Hugh challenged him to 
single combat, because of his crime of abduction, John offered to 
accept it by deputy, and to fight also by deputy. Sir Hugh knew 



334 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

the craven prince thoroughly, and truly enough remarked that the 
deputy would be a mere assassin, and he would have nothing to 
do with either principal or representative. John kept the lady ; 
and, if there be any persons curious to see how niggardly he kept 
her, they are referred to the duly published chronicles wherein 
there are full details. 

Henry III. was the most pacifically-minded of the kings of 
England who had hitherto reigned. He had little of the knight 
about him, except the courtesy, and he could occasionally forget 
even that. Devotion to the fair, too, may fairly be reckoned 
among his knightly qualities ; but he lacked the crowning virtue 
of fidelity. He wooed many, was rejected by several, and jilted 
the few who believed in him. He exhibited, it must be allowed, 
a chivalrous generosity in at last marrying Eleanor of Castile, 
without dowry ; but he was not the more true to her on that ac- 
count. Mild as he was by nature, he was the especial favorite 
of the most warlike of the orders of knighthood — the Templars. 
They mourned for him when dead, as though he had been the 
very flower of chivalry, and the most approved master of their 
order. They buried him, too, with a pomp which must have 
drawn largely even on their well-lined purses, and the Knights 
of the Temple deposited the king in the tomb of the most pious 
of monarchs — Edward the Confessor. It is difficult to say why 
the Templars had such love for the weak king, for he was not an 
encourager of knightly associations and observations. At the same 
time he may be said to have lowered the estimation in which 
knighthood had been held, by making the honor itself cheap, and 
sometimes even less than that — unwelcome. Henry III. issued 
a writ in the twenty-ninth year of his reign, summoning tenants 
in chief to come and receive knighthood at his hands : and tenants 
of mesne lords to be knighted by whomsoever they pleased. It 
may be believed that this last permission was abused, for soon 
after this period "it became an established principle of our law 
that no subject can confer knighthood except by the king's author- 
ity." So says Hallam. The mx>st extraordinary law or custom 
of this reign with respect to chivalry was, that any man who pos- 
sessed an annual income of fifteen pounds derived from land, was 
to be compelled to receive the honor of knighthood. 



THE KINGS OF ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS. 335 

The successor of Henry, Edward I., was of a far more knightly 
quality. Faithful in love, intrepid in battle, generous to the needy, 
and courteous to all — except when his temper was crossed — he 
may pass muster as a very respectable knight. He was active 
and strong, and, with one hand on the back of his steed, could 
vault, at a single bound, into the saddle. Few men cared less for 
finery. He was even reproved on one occasion by a bishop, for 
being dressed beneath his dignity of either king or knight. " Fa- 
ther," said Edward, " what could I do more in royal robes than 
in this plain gaberdine ?" 

Edward would have acted little in the spirit of a true knight 
if he had really acted toward the Bards, according to the cruel 
fashion recorded in history. I am inclined to believe with Da- 
vies, in his " Mythology of the Druids," that this king has been 
calumniated in this respect. " There is not the name," says Da- 
vies, " of a single bard upon record who suffered either by his 
hand or by his orders. His real act was the removal of that pat- 
ronage, under which the bards had, hitherto, cherished the heathen- 
ish superstition of their ancestors, to the disgrace of our native 
princes." This king showed a feeling common with many knights, 
that however indifferently they might look living, in rusty armor 
or faded mantle, they should wear a decent and comely covering 
when dead. Thus he ordered that every year his tomb should 
be opened, and his remains covered with a new cere-cloth or pall. 
It was a pride akin to that of Mrs. Oldfield's, in the days of our 
grandmothers, who was buried in a Brussels lace head-dress, a 
Holland shift with tucker and double ruffles of the same lace, and 
a pair of new kid gloves. The same weakness of nature marked 
both the tragedy-queen and the actual king ; and it marks many 
more than they. There was more humility, however, in the sec- 
ond Duke Richard of Normandy, who was far more chivalrous 
than Edward I., and who ordered his body to be buried at the 
church-door, where passengers might tread upon it, and the spouts 
from the roof discharge their water upon it. 

It was in the religious spirit of chivalry that Edward I. expelled 
the Jews. One curious result is said to have followed. Report 
alleges that many of the Jewish families fled into Scotland, where 



836 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

" they have propagated ever since in great numbers ; witness the 
aversion this nation has above others to hog's flesh." 

Of the unfortunate Edward II., it may be said that he was an 
indifferent knight, who gave the honors of chivalry to very indif- 
ferent persons, and committed great outrages on knightly orders 
themselves. In the annals of knighthood he is remembered as the 
monarch who abolished the Order of Knights Templars in Eng- 
land. He treated the luckless chevaliers with far more generosity 
than Henry VIII. observed toward the ejected monks and ab- 
bots. He allowed two shillings per day to the deprived master 
of the Temple, and fourpenee each daily to the other knights for 
their support, out of their former confiscated property. Edward 
himself loved carousing and hunting, more than any other pastime. 
There were other pleasures, indeed, in which he greatly delighted, 
and these are well catalogued in one of Gaveston's speeches in 
Marlowe's tragedy, called by this king's name : — 

" I must have wanton poets, pleasant wits, 
Musicians, that with to aching of a string, 
May draw the pliant king which way I please ; 
Music and poetry are his delight, 
Therefore I'll have Italian masks by night, 
Sweet speeches, comedies, and pleasing slaves ; 
And in the day, when he shall walk abroad, 
Like sylvan nymphs my pages shall be clad ; 
My men, like satyrs grazing on the lawns, 
Shall with their goats' feet dance the antic lay. 
Sometimes a lovely boy, in Dian's shape, 
With hair that gilds the water as it glides 
Coronets of pearl about his naked arms, 
And in his sportive hands an olive-tree, 
To hide those parts which men delight te see, 
Shall bathe him in a spring ; and there hard by 
One, like Action, peeping through the grove, 
Shall by the angry goddess be transformed, 
And running in the likeness of a hart, 
By yelping hounds pulled down, shall seem to die ; 
Such things as these best please his majesty." 

How dearly he paid for indulgence in such pleasures, and how 
meekly he accepted his fierce destiny or retribution, need not be 
detailed here. 



THE KINGS OF ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS. 337 

Whatever may be thought of the character of Edward II. him- 
self, his chivalry wrought little good for the realm. The crown of 
England during his reign was weaker ; and as the knight-histo- 
rian, Sir J. Davies, remarks in his History of Ireland, " suffered 
more dishonor in both kingdoms than at any time since the Norman 
Conquest." There were few such honest knights, too, in that 
reio-n, as in that of the third Edward, when Sir Thomas Rookes- 
by, an eminent law-knight and judge, was wont to say that he 
•' would eat in wooden dishes, but would pay gold and silver for 
his meat." In this speech a blow was dealt at the extravagant 
people who in order " to eat off plate," made no scruple of cheat- 
ing their butcher. 

In Edward III. we have a king who is more closely connected 
with knightly associations in our memory than any other sovereign 
of England. He it was who, by reviving or reconstructing the 
ancient order, founded by Richard L, of " The Blue Thong" — a 
leather knee-band, worn by certain of the English crusaders — 
formed that brilliant Order of the Garter, winch has been con- 
ferred on so few who are deserving, and on so many whose 
claims were not so great as their " pretensions." 

How far gallantry to the Countess of Salisbury had to do with 
the renewing of the Order of the Blue Thong, under the name of 
the Garter, is still an unsettled rather than a disputed point. 
Froissart's account is : " You have all heard how passionately 
King Edward was smitten with the charms of the noble Lady 
Katherine, Countess of Salisbury. Out of affection to the said 
lady, and his desire to see her, he proclaimed a great feast, in 
August, 1343. He commanded all his own lords and knights 
should be there without fail, and he expressly ordered the Earl 
of Salisbury to bring his lady, his wife, with as many young ladies 
as she could collect to attend her. The Earl very cheerfully com- 
plied with the king's request, for he thought no evil, and his good 
lady dared not to say nay. She came, however, much against her 
will, for she guessed the reason which made the king so earnest 
for her attendance, but was afraid to discover it to her husband, 
intending by her conduct to make the king change his opinion. . . 
All the ladies and damsels who assisted at the first convocation of 
the Order of the Garter came superbly dressed, excepting the 

22 



338 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

Countess of Salisbury, who attended the festival, dressed as plainly 
as possible ; she did not wish the king to admire her, for she had no 
intention to obey him in anything evil, that might tend to the dis- 
honor of her dear lord." The repetition of the word evil here, has 
probably nothing to do with the motto of the Garter, but I may 
notice that when Froissart calls the above festival a convocation of 
the order, he is in error, for, the first chapter of the Garter was 
held at Windsor, on St. George's Day, 1344. At this chapter 
Queen Philippa was present in the robes of the order ; for every 
knight's lady in the olden time shared in the knightly honors of 
her lord. 

How Edward bore himself in tournament and battle we all 
know. Both historians and poets have rejoiced to exhibit this 
chivalrous monarch as a lover, and he is even more interesting as 
a knight in love than as one in war, and moreover as the account 
of him in the former character reveals some other incidents of 
knightly life, I will borrow Froissart's historical picture of Edward 
in a lady's bower, and contrast therewith the picture of the same 
monarch in the same circumstances, as depicted by the hands of a 
poet. It is only necessary to premise that the lady who was the 
object of Edward's homage was Katherine de Granson, daughter 
of a handsome, penniless knight, and a rich Wiltshire heiress 
named Sibyl. " Katherine the fair," says Miss Strickland, " was 
the only child of this couple, and was richly endowed with her 
mother's wealth and her father's beauty. She bestowed both on 
the brave Earl of Salisbury" — who, if he was ugly as he was val- 
iant, must have been grateful for the gift of the beauty of William 
de Granson. 

When Edward wooed the countess, the earl was a prisoner in 
France, and the lady's castle of Wark had just been relieved from 
siege laid against it by an army of Scots. "The moment the 
countess heard the king's approach she ordered all the gates to be 
thrown open, and went out to meet him most richly dressed, inso- 
much that no one could look at her, but with wonder and admira- 
tion at her noble deportment and affability of behavior. When 
she came near King Edward she made her obeisance to the ground, 
and gave him thanks for coming to her assistance, and then con- 
ducted him into the castle, to entertain and honor him, as she was 



THE KINGS OF ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS. 839 

very capable of doing. Every one was delighted with her ; but 
the king could not take his eyes from her ; so that a spark of fine 
love struck upon his heart, which lasted for a long time, for he did 
not believe that the whole world produced another such a lady, so 
worthy of being beloved. Thus they entered the castle, hand in 
hand. The countess led him first to the hall, and then to the best 
chamber which was very richly furnished as belonging to so fine 
a lady. King Edward kept his eyes so fixed upon the countess 
that the gentle lady was quite abashed. After he had sufficiently 
examined his apartment, he retired to a window, and leaning on it, 
fell into a profound revery. 

" The countess left him, to order dinner to be made ready, and 
the table set, and the hall ornamented and set out ; likewise to 
welcome the knights and lords who accompanied the king. When 
she had given all the orders to her servants she thought needful, 
she returned with a cheerful countenance to King Edward and 
said : ' Dear sir, what are you musing on ? Such meditation is 
not proper for you, saving your grace ! You ought rather to be 
in high spirits, having freed England from her enemy without loss 
of blood.' The king replied, ' Oh, dear lady, you must know 
since I have been in this castle, some thoughts have oppressed 
my mind that I was not before aware of, so that it behooves me to 
reflect. Being uncertain what may be the event, I can not with- 
draw my attention.' * Dear sir,' answered the lady, ' you ought 
to be of good cheer, and feast with your friends to give them more 
pleasure, and leave off pondering, for God has been very bountiful 
to you in your undertakings, so that you are the most feared and 
renowned prince in Christendom. If the king of Scotland have 
vexed you by the mischief he hath done in your kingdom, you 
will speedily be able to make reprisals in his dominions. There- 
fore, come, if it please you, into the hall to your knights, for your 
dinner will soon be served.' ' Oh, sweet lady,' said King Ed- 
ward, ' there be other things which touch my heart and lie heavy 
there, than what you talk of. For in good truth, your beauteous 
mien, and the perfection of your face and behavior have wholly 
overcome me, and so deeply impress my heart, that my happiness 
wholly depends on meeting a return to my flame, which no denial 
from you can ever extinguish.' * Oh, my dear lord,' replied the 



340 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

countess, ' do not amuse yourself by laughing at me with trying 
to tempt me ; for I can not believe you are in earnest as to what 
you have just said. Is it likely that so gallant and noble a prince, 
as you are, would ever think of dishonoring either me or my hus- 
band, a valiant knight, who has served you so faithfully, and who 
now lies in a doleful prison on your account ? Certainly, sir, this 
would not redound to your glory, nor would you be the better if 
you could have your wayward will.' 

" The virtuous lady then quitted the king, who was astonished 
at her words. She went into the hall to hasten dinner ; afterward 
she approached the king's chamber, attended by all the knights, 
and said to him, ' My lord king, your knights are all waiting for 
you, to wash their hands, for they, as well as yourself, have fasted 
too long.' King Edward left his apartment, and came to the hall, 
where, after he had washed his hands, he seated himself with his 
knights at the dinner, as did the lady also ; but the king ate very 
little, and was the whole time pensive, casting his eyes, whenever 
he had the opportunity, on the countess. Such behavior sur- 
prised his friends, for they were not accustomed to it, never having 
seen the like before in the king. They supposed it was his chagrin 
at the departure of the Scots without a battle. The king remained 
at the castle the whole day, without knowing what to do with him- 
self. Thus did he pass that day and a sleepless night, debating 
the matter within his own heart. At daybreak he rose, drew out 
Ms whole army, exercised his camp, and made ready to follow the 
Scots. Upon taking leave of the countess he said, l My dear lady, 
God preserve you safe till I return ; and I pray that you will 
think well of what I have said, and have the goodness to give me 
a different answer.' ' My gracious liege,' replied the countess, 
' God of his infinite goodness preserve you, and drive from your 
noble heart such villanous thoughts, for I am, and ever shall be, 
willing to serve you, but only in what is consistent with my honor 
and with yours.' The king left her, quite astonished at her an- 
swers." He was, in fact, a very villanous personage in these mat- 
ters, and looked for as much submission from those ladies on whom 
he cast his eyes, as the Czar Nicholas did from the loyal ladies 
whom that " copper captain" delighted to favor. 

An unknown poet, of the period between 1590 and 1600, in an 



THE KINGS OF ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS. 341 

historical play entitled " Edward III." has reproduced this inci- 
dent, and worked it up for the stage — with some touches winch 
are probably warranted by facts, and which, for that reason alone, 
render the passage worth transcribing. 

Edivard (solus). She is grown more fairer far, since I came hither. 
Her voice more silver ev'ry word than other, 
Her wit more fluent ; what a strange discourse 
Unfolded she of David and his Scots ! 
Even thus, quoth she, he spoke ; and then spake broad 
With, epithets and accent of the Scot ; 
But somewhat better than the Scot could speak : 
And then, quoth she, and answered then herself ; 
For who could speak like her ? hut she herself 
Breathes from the wall an angel note from heaven 
Of sweet defiance to her barbarous foes — 
When she could talk of peace, methinks her tongue 
Commanded war to prison ; when of war, 
It wakened Caesar from his Roman grave, 
To hear war beautified by her discourse. 
"Wisdom is foolishness, but in her tongue ; 
Beauty is slander, but in her fair face; 
There is no summer, but in her cheerful looks ; 
Nor frosty winter, but in her disdain. 
I can not blame the Scots that did besiege her,. 
For she is all the treasure of our land ; 
But call them cowards that they ran away, 
Having so rich and fair a cause to stay. 

# # # *= * # 

Countess. Sorry am I to see my liege so sad ; 
What may thy subject do to drive from thee 
This gloomy consort, sullen Melancholy ? 

Edward. Ah, Lady ! I am blunt and can not straw 
The flowers of solace in a ground of shame. 
Since I came hither, Countess, I am wronged. 

Countess. Now, God forbid that any in my house 
Should think my sov'reign wrong ! Thrice gentle king, 
Acquaint me with your cause of discontent. 

Edward. How near then shall I be to remedy ? 

Countess. As near, my liege, as all my woman's power 
Can pawn itself to buy thy remedy. 

Edward. If thou speak'st true, then have I my redress. 
Engage thy power to redeem my joys, 
And I am joyful, Countess ; else I die. 

Countess. I will, my liege. 



342 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

Edward. Swear, Countess, that thou wilt. 

Countess. By Heaven, I will ! 

Edward. Then take thyself a little way aside, 
And tell thyself a king doth dote on thee. 
Say that within thy power it doth lie 
To make him happy ; and that thou hast sworn 
To give him all the joy within thy power. 
Do this, and tell him, when I shall be happy. 

Countess. All this is done, my thrice-dread sovereign. 
That power of love that I have power to give 
Thou hast, with all devout obedience. 
Employ me how thou wilt, in proof thereof. 

Edward. Thou hear'st me say that I do dote on thee. 

Countess. If on my beauty, take it, if thou canst. 
Though little, I do prize it ten times less ; 
If on my virtue, take it, if thou canst ; 
For virtue's store, by giving, doth augment. 
Be it on what it will that I can give, 
And thou canst take away, inherit it. 

Edward. It is thy beauty that I would enjoy. 

Countess. Oh ! were it painted, I would wipe it off, 
And dispossess myself to give it thee. 
But, sov'reign, it is soldered to my life. 
Take one and both ; for, like an humble shadow, 
It haunts the sunshine of my summer's life. 

Edward. But thou mayst lend it me in sport withal. 

Countess. As easy may my intellectual soul 
Be lent away, and yet my body live, 
As lend my body (palace to my soul) 
Away from her, and yet retain my soul. 
My body is her bower, her court, her abbey, 
And she an angel, pure, divine, unspotted. 
If I should lend her house, my lord, to thee, 
I kill my poor soul, and my poor soul me. 

Edward. Didst thou not swear to give me what I would ? 

Countess. I did, my liege ; so what you would I could. 

Edward. I wish no more of thee than thou mayst give. 
Nor beg I do not, but I rather buy ; 
That is thy love ; and for that love of thine, 
In rich exchange I tender to thee mine. 

Countess. But that your lips were sacred, my good lord, 
You would profane the holy name of love. 
That love you offer me, you can not give ; 
For Caesar owes that tribute to his queen. 
That love you beg of me I can not give ; 
For Sarah owes that duty to her lord. 



THE KINGS OF ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS. 343 

He that doth clip or counterfeit your stamp 

Shall die, my lord ; and shall your sacred self 

Commit high treason 'gainst the King of Heav'n, 

To stamp his image in forbidden metal, 

Forgetting your allegiance and your oath 1 

In violating marriage' sacred law 

You break a greater honor than yourself. 

To be a king is of a younger house 

Than to be married ; your progenitor, 

Sole-reigning Adam on the universe, 

By God was honored for a married man, 

But not by Him anointed for a king. 

It is a penalty to break your statutes, 

Though not enacted with your highness' hand ; 

How much more to infringe the holy act 

Made by the mouth of God, sealed with his hand 1 

I know my sovereign in my husband's love 

Doth but to try the wife of Salisbury, 

Whether she will hear a wanton's tale or no ; 

Lest, being guilty therein, by my stay, 

From that, not from my liege, I turn away. 

The countess, naturally, has the best of the argument, and 
shames the king. In this pleasant light is she presented by both 
chronicler and poet, and the lady, chiefly to honor whom the Order 
of the Garter was constructed upon the basis of the Order of the 
Blue Thong, was worthy of all the distinctive homage that could 
be rendered to her by knight or king. 

Richard II., so fond of parade and pleasure, so refined and in- 
tellectual, so affable at first, so despotic and absolute at last, till he 
was superseded and then slain, is among the most melancholy of 
knights and sovereigns. He was not heroic, for he was easily ele- 
vated and easily depressed. He turned deadly pale on hearing, 
in Ireland, of the landing of Henry Bolingbroke in England, and 
that the Archbishop of Canterbury had preached in favor of the 
usurper. He was eminently courageous, sang a roundelay as well 
as any minstrel, and often made the roundelays he sung. He 
looked little like a knight indeed when he traversed part of Wales 
to Conway, disguised as a Franciscan friar ; or flying from castle 
to castle, having sorry lodging and little food. It was in the dress 
and cowl of a monk that the once chivalrous Richard surrendered 
himself to his cousin. In the army of that cousin, sent to take 



344 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

Richard and his few faithful knights and squires who refused to 
detach his device from their coats, was " Sir Henry Percy" (the 
Hotspur of Shakespeare), " whom they held to be the best knight 
in England." 

It was by persuasion of Hotspur's father that Richard left Con- 
way for Flint, where he was made prisoner, and afterward con- 
veyed to Chester, the English knights of the opposite faction be- 
having to him with most unchivalric rudeness. The unsceptred 
monarch was first taken to Pickering, one of the most beautiful 
spots in England, defaced by scenes of the greatest crimes, of 
which place knights and nobles were the masters. Thence he 
passed on to Leeds and Knaresborough Castle, where the king's 
chamber is still pointed out to visiters. Finally, he was carried 
to " bloody Pomfret" — " fatal and ominous to noble peers." Never, 
it is said, did man look less like a knight than the unhappy king, 
when he appeared before the drawbridge of Pontefract Castle. 
Majestic still he was in feature, but the majesty was depressed by 
such profound melancholy, that few could look upon the weeping 
king without themselves shedding tears. If the picture of him at 
tliis juncture might be metrically given in outline, the following 
sketch might feebly render it : — 

Who enters now that gate, 
With dignity upon his pallid brow ? 
Who is the man that, bending to his fate, 
Comes hither now ! 

A man of wo he seems, 
Whom Sadness deep hath long marked for her own. 
Hath such a form as that indulged in dreams 

Upon a throne ? 

Have smiles e'er wreathed that face 1 
Face now so stamped with every line that's sad ; 
Was joy e'er known those quivering lips to grace, 
That heart to glad ? 

Who is this shadow's shade ? 
This type of withered majesty ? this thing ? 
Can it be true that knightly form decayed 
Was once a king ? 



THE KINGS OF ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS. 845 

Son of a noble sire, 
And of his father's virtues too, the heir ; 
Those eyes so dim once rivalled the sun's fire ; 
None were more fair. 

Gallant, and light of heart, 
The rock-born eagle was less bold than he ; 
Formed upon earth to play each graceful part 
Enchantingly. 

His joys were early crushed ; 
His mind perverted by most ruthless men ; 
Hope, like a short-lived rose, a moment blushed, 
And withered then. 

His virtues were his own ; 
His vices forced upon him, against his will ; 
His weaker faults were of his age alone — 
That age of ill. 

In him thou seest the truth, 
How tyrannous and all-usurping night, 
Heedless of means, will, acting without ruth, 
Triumph o'er Right. 

Nor is this lesson sad 
Void of instruction to the wary sent. 
Learn from it with thy portion to be glad, 
Meek and content. 

And be, where'er thy path, 
Whate'er the trials life may to thee bring, 
Grateful that Heaven has not, in its wrath, 
Made thee a king ! 

Of the chivalrous spirit of Henry IV. no one entertains a 
doubt, and yet he once refused to accept a challenge. The chal- 
lenger was the Duke of Orleans, who had been Henry's sworn 
friend, accomplice in some of his deeds, and who, failing to realize 
all the advantages he expected, urged Henry to meet him in the 
marches of Guienne, with a hundred knights on each side. Henry 
fenced with the challenge rather than with the challenger, but 
when the latter called him rebel, usurper, and murderer, he gave 
his former friend the lie, in no very gentle terms, as regarded the 



346 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

charge of being accessory to the death of Richard. The little 
flower, the Forget-me-not, owes some of its popularity to Henry, 
who, previous to his being king, and when in exile, chose it for 
his symbol, wore it in gold on Ins collar, and added to it by way 
of device, the words " Souvenez de moi." It is worthy of obser- 
vation that, after Henry's death, his widow, Joanna of Navarre, 
continued to be recognised as a lady of the Garter, receiving 
presents from Henry V. as such, and being in attendance on high 
festivals, in robes of the order, the gift of the new king. 

That new king requires no advocacy as a knight. The simple 
word " Agincourt" is sufficient. His wooing of Katherine of Va- 
lois is also characteristic of the gallant, if not the amorous knight. 
At the betrothal of the illustrious couple, Henry presented to the 
lady Ins own favorite knight, Sir Louis de Bobsart, as her per- 
sonal attendant, to watch for ever over her safety ; but this queen's 
knight was simply the queen's keeper, and his chief mission was 
to take care that the lady was not stolen from him, between the 
day of betrothal and that of the royal nuptials. 

Although the reign of Henry V. formed a period of glory for 
knighthood, the victories obtained by the chivalrous combatants 
were effected at such a cost, that toward the close of the reign, 
there were not men enough in England qualified to competently 
carry on its civil business. It was still worse under Henry VI. 
When peace with France was negotiating, the Cardinal of "Win- 
chester represented to the French government that, during a 
struggle of a quarter of a century, there had been more men, of 
both countries, slain in these wars, for the title and claim to the 
crown of France, than there were then existing in the two nations. 
It was shocking, the Cardinal said, to think of so much Christian 
blood having been shed ; — and there were not very many Christian 
knights left to cry " hear, hear," to such an assertion. 

Least cavalier of any of the kings who had hitherto reigned 
was Henry VI., but there was chivalry enough for two in the 
heart of his admirable wife, the most heroic, perhaps, of English 
queens, Margaret of Anjou. How unlike was the destiny of tliis 
ill-matched pair to that of their successors Edward IV. and Ins 
wife Elizabeth "Woodville ! This king assumed one privilege of 
knighthood, by loving whom he pleased, and marrying whom he 



THE KINGS OF ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS. 347 

loved. He was the first king of England who married with a 
simple lady, that is, one not of princely blood. He did not 
prosper much the more for it, for his reign was one of a rather 
splendid misery, in which the luxurious king was faithful to no 
one, neither to the friends who upheld his cause, nor to Mistress 
Shore, who helped him to render his cause unworthy. Passing 
over Edward V., we may notice that there was much more of the 
knightly character in Richard HX, than in the fourth Edward. 
Richard would be better appreciated if we judged him according 
to the spirit of the times in which he was born, and not by the 
standard of our own. A braver monarch never fronted an En- 
glish force ; and if heavy crimes can justly be laid to his account, 
it should not be forgotten, that amid the bloody struggles which 
he had to maintain, from the day almost of his accession, he had 
leisure to put in force more than one enactment by which English 
people profit, down even to the present period. 

I have elsewhere remarked that many of us originally take our 
idea of Henry VII. from the dashing Richmond who opens the 
fifth act of Richard III. in panoply and high spirits. None of 
Shakespeare's characters make a more knight-like appearance 
than he. The fact, nevertheless, is that Henry was anything but 
chivalrous in mien or carriage. His mother was married, it was 
said, when only nine years old ; and it is added that Henry was 
born in the year following the marriage. It is certain that the 
lady was not in her teens, and to this circumstance, Turner is in- 
clined to attribute the feebleness of Henry's constitution. 

If he could not so well defend himself by the sword as poets 
and Tudor historians have declared he could, he at least knew 
how to do so by the strong arm of the law. It was in his reign 
that benefit of clergy was taken from lay persons murdering their 
lord, master, or sovereign immediate. 

It is as certain that, in some parts of the island at least, the 
chivalry of Richard, who was never nearly so black as he has 
been painted, was more appreciated than the cautiousness of his 
successful rival. In the northern counties, says Bacon, "the 
memory of King Richard was so strong, that it lay like lees in 
the bottom of men's hearts, and if the vessel was but stirred, it 
would come up." 



348 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

The gallant sentiment of chivalry was really strongly impressed 
on the popular mind at this period. I may cite as an instance, 
that not only was Perkin Warbeck, who may be called an adven- 
turous knight who has not had due justice rendered to him, 
familiarly spoken of by the name of " the White Rose ;" but that 
if we may believe Bacon, the name was continued in common 
speech to his wife, in compliment to her true beauty. 

Henry has been much censured for a vice from which all knights 
were bound, like friars, to be free. But there were chevaliers in 
his reign who were as fond of money as he. Sir William Stanley 
was one of them. At the period of his execution, there was found 
in his castle of Holt, a more than modest temporary provision for 
a poor knight. In ready money alone, there were forty thousand 
marks — to say nothing of plate, jewelry, household furniture, and 
live stock, all in abundance, and of the first quality. " And for 
his revenue in land and fee, it was three thousand pounds sterling 
a year of old rent, great matter in those times. The great spoil 
of Bosworth field came almost wholly into this man's hands, to his 
infinite enriching." 

Bacon classes Henry VII., Louis XI., and Ferdinand of Ara- 
gon, as the three Magi of kings of the age in which they lived. 
It is a happy classification. Ferdinand, however, had more of the 
knight in him than his royal cousins, and not less of the statesman. 
He it was who first invented the resident embassador at foreign 
courts. 

In chivalric bearing, Henry VIII., when young, was perhaps 
never equalled, and certainly never surpassed. He was the most 
courteous of knights, and the most gallant of gentlemen. As long 
as he had Cardinal Wolsey at his side to guide and control him, 
he maintained this character unimpaired ; and it was not till this 
old Mentor died, that Henry lost his reputation as a Christian 
knight and gentleman. 

By a decree of the 24th of this king's reign, no person below 
the degree of a knight could wear a collar of SS. The judges 
wear such collars because they are, or rank with, knights. That 
a decree was issued to this effect would seem to imply that previous 
to the period named, individuals below the knightly degree might 
wear the collar in question. Ifcdward IV., therefore, when he 



THE KINGS OF ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS. 349 

conferred the collar on the Tanner of Tarnworth, was not guilty 
of any anomaly. On the contrary, he evidently knew what he 
was about, by the remark — 

" So here I make thee the best Esqnire 
That is in the North Countrie." 

In Edward's time then, the collar niay have constituted the dif- 
ference between squire and knight. But it was not the only one. 
If there was a difference at their necks, there was also a distinc- 
tion at their heels. The knight always wore golden spurs : he was 
the Eques Auratus. The squire could wear spurs of no more 
costly metal than silver, and " White-spurs," accordingly, was the 
generic term for an esquire. It was probably in allusion to this 
that the country squire mentioned by Jonson, displayed his silver 
spurs among his side-board plate. To return to Henry VIII. ; 
let me add that he exhibited something of what was considered a 
knightly attribute, compassion for the lowly, when he suggested 
that due sleeping-time should be allowed to laborers during the 
summer. 

Edward VI. was simply a youth of much promise. His father 
was unwilling to create him a knight before he knew how to wield 
arms ; and if he gained this knowledge early, he was never called 
to put it in practice. There was more of the chivalrous character 
in his over-abused half-sister, Mary, and also in Elizabeth ; but 
then queens can not of course be considered as knights : Elizabeth, 
however, had much of the spirit, and she was surrounded by 
knightly men and served with a knightly devotion. There was, 
I may observe, one species of knights in her time, who were known 
as " knights of the road." The 39th of Elizabeth, especially and 
curiously points to them in an act to relieve the hundred of Beyn- 
hurst from the statute of Hue and Cry (where there was no vol- 
untary default) on account of the penalties to which that hundred 
was subject from the numerous robberies committed in Maidenhead 
Thicket. Mavor, in his account of Berkshire, says that "The 
vicar of Henley who served the cure of Maidenhead, was allowed 
about the same time an advance of salary as some compensation 
for the .danger of passing the thicket." The vicar, like the knights 
of the road, at least, had purer air than the clergy and chivalry who 



350 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

kept house in the capital. " In London," says Euphues, " are all 
things (as the fame goeth) that may either please the sight, or 
dislike the smell ; either fill the eye with delight, or fill the nose 
with infection." 

Eefreshment under such circumstances was doubly needed; 
and the popular gratitude was due to that most serviceable of 
knights, Sir Thomas Gresham, who introduced the orange as an 
article of trade, and who was consequently painted by Antonio 
More with an orange in his hand. The old Utrecht artist just 
named, was knighted by Charles V. who paid him poorly — some 
six hundred ducats for three pictures, but added knighthood, which 
cost the emperor nothing, and was esteemed of great value by the 
painter. 

One would imagine that under Mary and Elizabeth, knighthood 
had become extinguished, were we to judge by an anonymous 
volume which was published in Mary's reign, and republished in 
that of Elizabeth. The great names of that period are proof to 
the contrary, but there may have been exceptions. Let us then 
look into the volume of this unknown writer who bewails the 
degeneracy of his times, and lays down what he entitles the 
" Institution of a Gentleman." 



"THE INSTITUTION OF A GENTLEMAN." 351 



" THE INSTITUTION OF A GENTLEMAN." 

" Your countenance, though it be glossed with knighthood, looks so bor- 
rowingly, that the best words you give me are as dreadful as ' stand and 
deliver.' " — The Asparagus Garden. 

The unknown author of the "Institution of a Gentleman," 
dedicates his able treatise to " Lorde Fitzwater, sonne and heire 
to the Duke of Sussex." In his dedicatory epistle he does not so 
much mourn over a general decay of manners, as over the lament- 
able fact, that the lowly-born are rising to gentility, while nobility 
and knighthood are going to decay. These he beseeches " to build 
gentry up again, which is, for truth sore decayed, and fallen to 
great ruin, whereby such great corruption of manners hath taken 
place, that almost the name of gentleman is quenched, and handi- 
craftsmen have obtained the title of honor, though (indeed) of 
themselves they can challenge no greater worthiness than the 
spade brought unto their late fathers." 

The writer is troubled with the same matter in his introductory 
chapter. This chapter shows how, at this time, trade was taking 
equality with gentry. " Yea, the merchantman thinketh not him- 
self well-bred unless he be called one of the worshipful sort of 
merchants, of whom the handicraftsman hath taken example; 
and taketh to be called ' Master,' whose father and grandfather 
were wont to be called ' Good Man.' " 

On the question of " What is a gentleman ?" the author goes 
back to a very remote period, that of Adam, quoting the old 
saying : — 

" When Adam delved and Eve span, 
Who was then the gentleman V 

and he makes the following comment upon this well-known text : 
" There be many of so gross understanding that they think to 



352 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

confound a gentleman, when they ask of him this question. To 
whom it may be said that so much grace as Adam our first father, 
received of God at his creation, so much nobility and gentry he 
received. And to understand perfectly how and after what de- 
meanor Adam behaved himself, or how he directed the order of 
his life, the witnesses, I think, in that behalf are far to seek, whose 
behavior, if it were good and honest, then was he the first gentle- 
man, even so much as the first earthly follower of virtues. But 
if there were in him no such virtue, then was he the first gentle- 
man in whom virtues and gentle deeds did first appear." 

As a training toward excellence, our anonymous author recom- 
mends severity of discipline from the cradle upward. " Neither," 
he says, " do I mean to allow any liberty to youth, for as liberty 
is to all eyes hurtful, so is it to youth a present poison ;" but he 
forgets that even poisons are administered in small doses in order 
to cure certain diseases, and that life would be a disease, even to 
the young, without some measure of liberty. He is terribly afraid 
that freedom in childhood will spoil the man, who himself will be 
no man, with too much liberty, but a " Royster ;" " and a ' Roys- 
ter,' " he adds, " can not do the office of a gentleman, so long I 
mean as a Roysterian he doth continue." 

He then informs us that there had long been in England a 
division of classes, under the heads of " Gentle Gentle, Gentle 
Ungentle, and Ungentle Gentle." These were not classes of so- 
ciety generally, but classes of the orders of Gentlemen exclusively. 
The Gentle Gentle are those of noble birth, from dukes' sons down 
to esquires, provided they join to their " gentle house, gentle man- 
ners, and noble conditions, which is the cause of the addition of 
the other word called gentle." This is much such a definition 
of gentleman as might be now given, with the exception that the 
question of birth has little to do with the matter, and that gentle 
manners and noble conditions, as our author calls gentlemanlike 
bearing, scholarly education, and Christian principles, now make 
of a man a gentleman, let him be of " gentle" house or not. In- 
deed, the author himself is not indisposed to accept this method 
of definition, for on proceeding to tell us what " Gentle Ungentle" 
is, he says that " Gentle Ungentle is that man which is descended 
of noble parentage, by the which he is commonly called gentle, 



"THE INSTITUTION OF A GENTLEMAN." 353 

and hath in him such corrupt and ungentle manners as to the 
judgment of all men he justly deserveth the name of ungentle." 
His remedy again for preventing the gentle becoming ungentle is 
coercion in youth-time. He thinks that virtue is to be got from 
the human being like oils or other juices from certain vegetable 
substances, by ex-pression. Squeeze the human being tightly, 
press him heavily, he is sure to yield something. No doubt ; but 
after the pressure he is often of little more use than a well-sucked 
orange. 

We next come to the " Ungentle Gentle." In the definition of 
this term, the author, with all his reverence for nobility, is com- 
pelled to allow that there is a nobility of condition as well as a 
nobility of birth ; but others who contested this fact, gave a new 
word to the English tongue, or made a new application of an old 
word in order to support their theory and assail those whom they 
sought to lower. 

" Ungentle Gentle," says our author, " is he which is born of a 
low degree — which man, taking his beginning of a poor kindred, 
by his virtue, wit, policy, industry, knowledge in laws, valiancy in 
arms, or such like honest means, becometh a well-behaved and 
high-esteemed man, preferred then to great office, put in great 
charge and credit, even so much as he becometh a post or stay of 
the commonwealth, and so growing rich, doth thereby advance and 
set up the rest of his poor line or kindred. They are the children 
of such one commonly called gentleman ; of which sort of gentle- 
man we have now in England very many, whereby it should 
appear that virtue flourisheth among us. These gentlemen are 
now called ' Up-starts,' a term lately invented by such as pondered 
not the grounds of honest means of rising or coming to promo- 
tion." Nevertheless, says our censor, there be upstarts enough 
and to spare. The worshipful unworthies, he tells us, abound ; 
and the son of good-man Thomas, or good-man John, have obtained 
the name of gentlemen, the degree of esquires or knights, and 
possessing " a little dunghill forecast to get lands, by certain dark 
augmentative practices," they are called "worshipful" at every 
assize. He dates the origin of this sort of nobility, knighthood 
and esquirearchy, from the time of the suppression and confisca- 

23 



354 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

tion of abbeys and abbey-estates. He has a curious passage on 
this subject : — 

" They have wrongfully intruded into gentry, and thrust them- 
selves therein, as Bayard, the cart-jade, might leap into the stable 
of Bucephalus, and thrust his head into the manger with that wor- 
thy courser. The particular names of whom, if I should go about 
to rehearse, it would require long labor, and bring no fruit to the 
readers thereof. And it is well known that such intruders, such 
unworthy worshipful men, have chiefly flourished since the put- 
ting down of abbeys, which time is within my remembrance." 

While allowing that gentlemanly manners help to make the gen- 
tleman, and that birth is only an accidental matter, having little 
to do with the subject, he still can not' forbear to reverence rather 
good men of high birth than good men of low degree. He evidently 
thinks that he was enjoined by religion to do so, for he remarks : 
" As in times past, no man was suffered to be ' Knyght of the 
Roodes,' but such one as was descended of the lyne of gentleman, 
whereby it appeareth that no men were thought so meet to de- 
fend the right, that is to say the faith of Christ, as gentlemen, 
and so to have their offices agreeable with their profession, it is 
most meet that all gentlemen be called to such room and office as 
may be profitable to the commonwealth." This idea that the 
holy sepulchre was to be rescued from the infidels only by gentle- 
men, and the fact that it has not been so rescued, reminds me of 
that king of Spain, who, finding himself in danger of being roasted 
alive, from sitting in a chair which one of his great officers had 
placed too near the fire, chose to roast on, for the singular reason 
that there was no grandee at hand to draw his chair away again ! 

In 1555, this writer still accounted the profession of arms as 
the noblest, the most profitable to the professor, and the most use- 
ful to the commonwealth. Courage, liberality, and faithful observ- 
ance of all promises ; thus endowed, he thinks a man is a true 
gentleman. He draws, however, a happy parallel when admitting 
that if it become a gentleman to be a good knight and valiant sol- 
dier, it even more becometh him to be a great statesman. For, 
" although to do valiantly in the wars it deserveth great praise 
and recompense, yet to minister justice in the state of peace is an 
office worthy of higher commendation. The reason is, wars are 



"THE INSTITUTION OF A GENTLEMAN." 355 

nothing necessary, but of necessity must be defended when they 
fall. And contrariwise, peace is a thing not only most necessary, 
but it is called the best thing which even nature hath given unto 
man." This parallel, if indeed it may be so called, is only em- 
ployed, however, for the purpose of showing that certain posts in 
the state should only be given to gentlemen born. There is a 
good deal of the red-tapist in our moralist after all ; and he has a 
horror, still entertained in certain localities, of admitting the dem- 
ocratic element into the public offices. Thus we find him main- 
taining that, " Unto a gentleman appertaineth more fully than unto 
any other sort of man, embassage or message to be done between 
kings or princes of this earth ; more fitly I say, because gentle- 
men do know how to bear countenance and comely gesture before 
the majesty of a king, better than other sorts of men." One 
would think that the majesty of a king was something too dazzling 
for a common man of common sense to look upon and live, and 
yet the writer is evidently aware that there is nothing in it, for he 
concludes his chapter on this matter by observing that " a gentle- 
man sent of embassage unto a prince ought to think a king to be 
but a man, and, in reverence and humility, boldly to say his mes- 
sage unto him." Surely a man of good sense might do this, irre- 
spective of his birth, particularly at a time when the unskilfulness 
and ignorance of gentlemen were so great as to pass into a proverb, 
and " He shooteth like a gentleman fair and far off," implied not 
only ill-shooting with bows and arrows, " but it extended farther 
and reached to greater matters, all to the dispraise of ignorant 
gentlemen." 

It is so common a matter with us to refer to the days in which 
this author wrote, as days in which old knights and country gen- 
tlemen maintained such hospitality as has seldom been since wit- 
nessed, that we are surprised to find complaint made, in this 
treatise, of something just the contrary. The author enjoins these 
knights and gentlemen to repair less to London, and be more seen 
dispensing hospitality in their own houses. " In the ancient times," 
he says, " when curious buildings fed not the eye of the wayfaring 
man, then might he be fed and have good repast at a gentleman's 
place, so called. Then stood the buttery door without a hatch ; 
yeoman then had no cause to carve small dishes ; Flanders cooks 



356 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

had then no wages for their devices, nor square tables were not 
used. This variety and change from the old English manner hath 
smally enriched gentlemen, but much it hath impoverished theii 
names, not without just punishment of their inconsistency in that 
behalf." Let me add, that the writer thinks the country knight 
or gentleman would do well were he to exercise the office of justice 
of the peace. He is sorely afraid, however, that there is a dis- 
qualification, on the ground of ignorance. A moralist might have 
the same fear just now, without coming to the same conclusion. 
Our author, for instance, argues that reverence is to be paid to the 
noble, quand meme. Let him be ignorant and tyrannical, yet to 
reverence him is to give example of obedience to others. This 
is very poor logic, and what follows is still worse ; for this writer 
very gravely remarks, that " We ought to bear the offences of 
noble men patiently, and that if these forget themselves, yet ought 
not smaller men to be oblivious of their duty in consequence, and 
fail in their respect." 

"We come upon another social trait, when we find the author 
lamenting that, however much it becometh a gentleman to be ac- 
quainted with hawking and hunting, yet that these pastimes are so 
abused by being followed to excess, that " gentlemen will almost 
do nothing else, or at the least can do that better than any other 
thing." To the excess alluded to does the author trace the fact 
that " there are so many raw soldiers when time of war requireth 
their help. This is the cause of so many unlearned gentlemen, 
which, as some say, they understand not the inkhorn terms that 
are lately crept into our language. And no marvel it is, though 
they do not understand them, whereas in their own hawking and 
hunting terms they be ignorants as 'Auvent' and 'Retrouvre,' 
which they call ' Houent and c J%etrires.'" What better could be 
expected from men who had given up the practice of the long 
bow to take to the throwing of dice ? But there was now as wild 
extravagance of dress as ignorance of uncommon things, in the 
class of foolish knights and gentlemen. This is alluded to in the 
chapter on dress, wherein it is said that " the sum of one hundred 
pounds is not to be accounted in these days to be bestowed of ap- 
parel for one gentleman, but in times past, a chamber gown was a 
garment which dwelt with an esquire of England twenty years" — 



"THE INSTITUTION OF A GENTLEMAN." 357 

and I believe that the knights were as frugal as the esquires. 
" Then flourished the laudable simplicity of England," exclaims 
the author ; " there were no conjurors and hot scholars, applying 
our minds to learne our new trifle in wearing our apparel." Upon 
the point of fashions, the author writes with a feeling as if he 
despaired of his country. " The Englishman," he observes, 
t; changeth daily the fashion of his garment ; sometimes he delight- 
eth in many guards, welts and pinks, and pounces. Sometimes 
again, to the contrary, he weareth his garments as plain as a sack ; 
yet faileth he not to change also that plainness if any other new 
fangle be invented. This is the vanity of his delight." And this 
vanity was common to all men of high degree in his time — to 
those to whom "honor" was due, from men of less degree — and 
these were " dukes, earls, lords, and such like, of high estate," as 
well as to those who were entitled to the " worship" of smaller 
men, and these were " knights, esquires, and gentlemen." There 
is here, I think, some confusion in the way such terms are applied ; 
but I have not made the extract for the purpose of grounding a 
comment upon it, but because it illustrates one portion of my sub- 
ject, and shows that while " your honor" was once the due phrase 
of respect to the peerage, " your worship" was the reverential one 
paid to knights, esquires, and gentlemen. We still apply the 
terms, if not to the different degrees named above, yet quite as 
confusedly, or as thoughtlessly with respect to the point whether 
there be anything honorable or worshipful in the individual ad- 
dressed. This, however, is only a form lingering among the lower 
classes. As matters of right, however, " his honor" still sits in 
Chancery, and " your worship" is to be seen behind any justice's 
table. 

We will now return to a race of kings who, whatever their de- 
fects, certainly did not lack some of the attributes of chivalry. 



358 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 



THE KINGS OF ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS. 

THE STUARTS. 

"May't be pleasure to a reader's ear, 
That never drew save his own country's air, 
To hear such things related." 

Heywood, the English Traveller 

It is an incontrovertible fact, that the king of England, who 
least of all resembled a knight in his warlike character, was the 
one who surpassed all his brother sovereigns in his knightly spirit 
as a lover. I allude to James I. The godson of Charles IX. of 
France was in his childhood, what his godfather had never been, 
a dirty, droll boy. He is the only king who ever added an origi- 
nal remark to a royal speech set down for him to deliver. The 
remark in question was, probably, nearly as long as the speech, 
for James was but four years old when he gave utterance to it. 
He had been rolling about on the throne impishly watching, the 
while, the grim lords to whom he, ultimately, recited a prepared 
speech with great gravity and correctness. At the end of his 
speech, he pointed to a split in the tiled roof of the hall, or to a 
rent in the canopy of the throne, and announced to the lords and 
others present the indisputable fact, that " there was a hole in the 
parliament." 

The precocious lad passed no very melancholy boyhood in 
Stirling Castle, till the Raid of Ruthven took him from his natu- 
ral protectors, and placed him in the hands of Gowrie. His es- 
cape thence exhibited both boldness and judgment in a youth of 
sixteen; and when Frederick II., of Denmark, gave him the 
choice of the two Danish princesses for a wife, no one thought 



THE KINGS OF ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS. 359 

that so gallant a king was undeserving of the compliment. When 
it was, however, discovered that the royal Dane required James 
either to accept a daughter or surrender the Orkney and Shetland 
islands, as property illegally wrested from Denmark, men began 
to look upon the Danish king as guilty of uncommonly sharp 
practice toward the sovereign of the Scots. A world of trouble 
ensued, which it is not my business to relate, although were I in- 
clined to be discursive — which, of course, I am not — I might 
find great temptation to indulge therein, upon this very subject. 
Suffice it then to say, that a world of trouble ensued before James 
made his selection, and agreed to take, rather than prayed to have 
granted to him, the hand of Elizabeth, the elder daughter of 
Frederick II. 

How the intrigues of Queen Elizabeth prevented this marriage 
I must not pause to relate. The Danish Princess espoused a 
reigning duke, and James was on the point of engaging himself 
to Katherine of Navarre, when the offer of the hand of Anne the 
younger daughter of Frederick being made to him, coupled with 
the alternative of his either taking Anne, or losing the islands, he 
" prayed and advised with God, for a fortnight," and wisely re- 
solved to wed with " pretty Anne." 

The matter progressed anything but smoothly for a time. At 
length, after endless vexations, the young princess was married by 
proxy, in August, 1589, and set sail, soon after, for Scotland under 
convoy of a dozen gallant ships, and with prospects of a very un- 
pleasant voyage. 

A terrible storm blew bride and convoy on to the inhospitable 
coast of Norway, and although two or three witches were execu- 
ted for raising this storm out of very spite, the matter was not 
mended. Disaster pursued the fleet, and death overtook several 
who sailed in it, till the coast of Scotland was fairly in sight. 
The Scotch witches, or perhaps other causes not less powerful 
than witches, in those seas, in the fall of the year, then blew the 
fleet back to the mouth of the Baltic. " I was commissifhed," 
said Peter Munch, the admiral, " to land the young queen in 
Scotland ; it is clear, therefore, that I can not return with her to 
Denmark. I will put her majesty ashore, therefore, in Norway." 
The conclusion was not logically attained, but the fact was as we 



360 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

have described it. Letters reached James announcing to him the 
deplorable condition in which his queen was lying at Upslo, on 
the Norwegian coast — storm-bound and half-famished. After 
many projects considered for her relief, James resolved to set 
forth and seek the princess himself. It is in this passage of his 
life that we have an illustration of the degree in which he sur- 
passed all other kings who have sat on the English throne — as a 
gallant knight es amours. 

Toward the end of October, of this year, in the very stormiest 
portion of the season, James went, privately, on board a diminu- 
tive vessel, with a very reluctant party of followers and confede- 
rates, leaving behind him, for the information of the astonished 
lieges, a promise to be back in twenty days ; and for their especial 
profit, a solemn exhortation to live peaceably till he arrived again 
among them, with his wife. 

The knightly lover landed in Norway, early in November, and 
made his way along the coast, now on foot, now on horseback 
anon in sledges, and occasionally in boats or on shipboard, until 
with infinite pains, and in a sorry plight, he reached Upslo, to no 
one's astonishment more than the queen's, about the 19th of No- 
vember. Accoutred and travel-soiled as he was, he proceeded at 
once to her presence. He was so well-pleased with the fair vision 
before him, that he made as if he would at once kiss the queen, 
who stood gazing at him. " It is not the form of my country," 
said pretty Anne, not very violently holding her head aside. " It's 
good old Scottish fashion," said the young king : and it was ob- 
served that in less than an hour, Anne had fallen very completely 
into the pleasant mode from beyond seas, and quite forgotten the 
forms of Denmark. 

The young couple were duly married in person, on the Sunday 
following the arrival of James. The latter, like any Paladin of 
romance, had perilled life, and contended with almost insurmount- 
able obstacles, in order to win the royal lady after a less easy 
fashion than marks the wooing and wedding of kings generally. 
Such a couple deserved to have the merriest of marriage banquets, 
but while such a storm was raging without as Norway itself had 
never seen since the sea-wind first blew over her, such a tempest 
was raised within, by the Scottish nobles, on a question of prece- 



THE KINGS OF ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS. oGl 

deuce, that the king himself was chiefly occupied in soothing the 
quarrellers, and only half succeeded in accomplishing the desired 
end. Added to this was the prospect of a long winter among the 
melancholy huts of Upslo. James, however, again exhibited the 
spirit of a knight of more than ordinary gallantry. He not only 
resolved that the young queen should not be thus imprisoned amid 
the Norway snows till May, but he resolved to conduct her him- 
self across the Norwegian Alps, through Sweden, to her Danish 
home. The idea of such a -journey seemed to partake of insan- 
ity, but James proceeded to realize it, by means of method and 
judgment. He first performed the perilous journey alone, as far 
as Sweden, and finding it practicable, returned for his wife, and 
departed a second time, hi her company. Much peril but small 
accident accompanied them on their way, and when the wedding 
party arrived safely at Cronenburg, toward the end of January, 
the marriage ceremony was not only repeated for the third time 
— to despite the witches who can do nothing against the luck that 
is said to lie in odd numbers, but there was a succession of mar- 
riage feasts, at which every gentleman drank deeper and deeper 
every day, until such uproar and dissension ensued that few kept 
their daggers in sheath except those who were too drunk to draw 
them. That all were not in the more disgraceful state, or were 
not continually in that condition, may be conjectured from the fact 
that James paid a visit to Tycho Brahe, and conversed with the 
astronomer in his observatory, in very vigorous Latin. The king, 
however, was not sorry to leave old Denmark, and when a Scot- 
tish fleet appeared off Cronenburg, to convey his bride and him- 
self homeward, he could no more be persuaded to stay a day 
longer, than Tycho Brahe could be persuaded that Copernicus 
was correct in dislodging the earth from its Ptolemaic stand-point 
as centre of the solar system. The bridal party set sail on the 
21st of April, 1590, and was safely moored in Leith harbor on 
May-day. A pretty bride could not have arrived at a more ap- 
propriate season. The royal knight and his lady deserved all the 
happiness that could be awarded to the gallantry of the one and 
the beauty of the other. But they did not escape the trials 
common to much less dignified couples ; and here the knightly 
character of James may be said to terminate. Exemplary as he 



862 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

had been as a lover, and faithful as he continued to be as a 
husband, he was in all other respects, simply a shrewd man ; and 
not indeed always that. There is little of this quality in a 
husband who begins and continues his married life with an in- 
difference upon the matter of borrowing. With James it was 
silver spoons to-day, silk stockings to-morrow, and marks and 
moidores from any one who would give him credit. The old 
French knight who drank broth out of his own helmet rather 
than sip it from a borrowed bowl, was moved at least by a good 
principle, James rather agreed with Carlo Buffone, in Jonson's 
" Every Man out of his Humor," that " it is an excellent policy to 
owe much in these days." A policy which, unfortunately, is 
still deemed excellent, in spite of the ruin which attends its 
practice. 

The grave chivalry impressed on the face and features of Charles 
I., is strikingly alluded to by Ben Jonson in his Masque of " The 
Metamorphosed Gypsies ;" for example : — 

"His brow, his eye, and ev'ry mark of state, 
As if he were the issue of each grace, 
And bore about him both his fame and fate. 

Echard says of him, that he was perfect in all knightly exer- 
cises, " vaulting, riding the great horse, running at the ring, shoot- 
ing with cross-bows, muskets, and sometimes great guns ; that if 
sovereignty had been the reward of excellences in those arts, he 
would have acquired a new title to the crown, being accounted the 
most celebrated marksman, and the most perfect manager of the 
great horse, of any in the three kingdoms." 

It was with reference to the expression of the face, alluded to 
by Jonson, that Bernini the sculptor said, on executing the bust 
of Charles, that he had never seen any face which showed so much 
greatness, and withal such marks of sadness and misfortune. The 
knight, Sir Richard Bulstrode, tells us, that when the bust was 
being carried across Greenwich Park, it suffered, what Moore 
calls on another occasion, some " Tobit-like marks of patronage" 
from the sparrows. " It was wiped off immediately," says Charles's 
good knight — "but, notwithstanding all endeavors, it would not 
be gotten off, but turned into blood." No chevalier in poetic ro- 
mance meets with more threatening portent than the above. 



THE KINGS OP ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS. 363 

The Scotch soldiers of fortune, at this period, were as good rep- 
resentatives as could be found of the old knight-errant. To them, 
Vittorio Siri imputes many of the misfortunes of the period. Some 
one tells of an old Scottish knight exclaiming, in a year of universal 
peace, " Lord, turn the world upside-down, that gentlemen may 
make bread of it." So, for the sake of furthering their trade of 
arms, the Scottish, and, indeed, other mercenary men-at-arms, 
fanned the flame. The words of Siri are precise on this point, for 
he says, " Le Leslie, le Gordoni, le Duglas ed altri milordi della 
Scotia, del' Inghilterra, e dell' Irlanda." 

Never had knights of romance worse fare in the dungeons of 
morose magicians than they who entered the bloody lists, where 
was fought out the quarrel between royalty and republicanism. 
" I heard a great officer say," remarks Blount, " that during the 
siege of Colchester, he dined at an entertainment, where the great- 
est delicacies were roast horseflesh." 

The warlike spirit was, probably, never stronger than in this 
reign. It is well illustrated by Hobbes, who remarks that, the 
Londoners and citizens of other county capitals, who fought against 
Charles, " had that in them which, in time of battle, is more con- 
ducing to victory, than valor and experience both together ; and 
that was spite." 

But it is as a lover that Charles I. is chiefly distinguished when 
we consider him solely to discover his knightly qualities. In his 
early days he was strongly impressed by romance, and possessed 
of romantic feelings. This fact is best illustrated by his conduct 
in connection with the Spanish Match ; and to this matter we will 
devote a brief space, and go back to the time when James was 
king, and Charles was Prince of Wales. 



364 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 



THE SPANISH MATCH. 

This unhappy and ill-advised affair, will ever remain one of the 
darkest blemishes on the uniformly pacific but inglorious reign of 
the royal pupil of Buchanan; — the whole detail is an ungrateful 
one of intrigue and ill-faith, and however justly Buckingham may 
be accused of exerting his baleful influence to dissolve the treaty, 
and that he did so in the wantonness of his power is now past 
doubt ; the disgrace which should have attached to him, still hangs 
round the memory of the timid king and his weak yet gallantly- 
disposed son. I am more inclined to allow a high-mindedness of 
feeling to Charles than to his father. The king, who supposed 
the entire art of reigning lay in dissimulation, may not be charged 
with an over-scrupulous nicety in his observations of the rules of 
fair dealing ; but the young prince, at this period, had the senti- 
ments without the vanity of a knight-errant, his only error was in 
the constitutional weakness which bent to the arrogance of Buck- 
ingham's somewhat stronger mind. With such a disposition, the 
favorite found it as easy to persuade Charles to break off the 
match, as he had with facility advised him to the romantic journey 
— as rash as it was impolitic. It would be almost an unprofitable 
occupation to search for Buckingham's motives, they are quite un- 
attainable, and, like hunting the hare in a wagon, conjecture 
might lead us on, but we should, at every step, be farther from 
our object. It is the received opinion, that the prince's visit was 
begun in caprice ; and with caprice it ended. Buckingham viewed 
it, perhaps, at first as a mere adventure, and he terminated it, be- 
cause his wounded pride suggested to him that he was not the 
favorite actor in the piece. His terms were, " Ego et rex meus," 
and a less-distinguished station would not satisfy the haughty in- 
solence of Somerset's succession in the precarious favor of the king. 



THE SPANISH MATCH. 365 

Our British Solomon who willed, but could not restore, the Pal- 
atinate to his son-in-law, had long been accustomed to consider the 
union of Charles with the Infanta, as the only available means left 
by which he could secure the object he had so much at heart. He 
was not made of the stern stuff, which in other kings would have 
set a whole army in motion. That " sagacious simpleton" was 
never in so turbulent a vein. His most powerful weapon was an 
ambassador, and the best of these were but sad specimens of di- 
plomacy, and thus, weak as he was, both in the cabinet and field, 
we may guess at his rapture when the marriage was agreed to by 
the Court of Spain — the restoration of the Palatinate talked of as 
a wedding present, and the bride's dowry two millions of eight. 

It was at the expiration of five years of negotiation, that James 
at length saw the end of what had hitherto been an ever-continuing 
vista. The dispensation of the Pope, an indispensable preliminary 
to the union of a Most Catholic princess, with a Protestant heir- 
apparent, had been held up as a difficulty ; James immediately 
loosened the reins with which he had held in the Catholic recusants 
— he set them at liberty, for the good of the reformed religion, he 
said ; then apologized to his subjects for having so set them at 
liberty — for the benefit of Protestantism; and finally, he exulted 
in having accomplished so honorable an end for England, as making 
her the first to enter the path of moderation. He, moreover, sent 
to Spain, Digby, the good and great Lord Bristol, and while he 
was negotiating with Philip IV., the Infanta's brother, George 
Gage, " a polite and prudent gentleman," was employed at Rome 
to smooth down the obstacles which the zeal of the Fourteenth 
Gregory raised in behalf of his mother-church. The parties were 
a long time at issue as to what period the presumed offspring of 
this marriage should remain under the guardianship of their moth- 
er ; that is to say, under the Catholic tuition of her confessors. 
The period of " fourteen years," was suggested by the Pope, and 
agreed to by the Court of Spain. Now, George Gage, we are 
told, was both polite and prudent ; George made some slight ob- 
jection. The father of the faithful and the descendant of Roderic 
now named twelve years as the stipulated period of maternal or 
ecclesiastical rule. Mr. Gage, without losing sight of his prudence, 
retained all his civility ; he treated the Pope courteously. Greg- 



366 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

ory, in return, granted the dispensation, condescended even to agree 
to the term of nine years, and merely asked a few privileges for 
the Catholic suite of the Infanta, which were not hard to grant, 
and would have been impolitic to refuse. James's advisers coun- 
selled him to demand the restitution of the Palatinate by a pre- 
liminary treaty. This he wisely refrained from doing; he saw 
that his desired object was considered inseparable from the mar- 
riage, and he was content to trust to the existing treaty which, 
probably, would not have been changed, had he so expressed his 
wish. There is a curious item in all these diplomatic relations ; 
beside the public treaty there were various private articles, passed 
between and signed by the parties concerned, agreeing that more 
toleration should be granted to the papists, and that more of the 
penal laws against them should be repealed than was expressed in 
the public document. There appears also to have existed a yet 
more private treaty, of even more restricted circulation, whereby 
James was not to be required to act up to the very letter of that 
article, by which his royal word pledged what was then considered 
— emancipation to the Catholics. 

Thus far had proceeded this tedious affair of state ; the nation 
was beginning to consider its accomplishment with diminished 
aversion, and a few months would have brought a Spanish Princess 
of Wales to England, when all this goodly and fair-wrought edifice 
was destroyed by the temerity of the man who was the evil spirit 
of the age. Charles's youth and inexperience readily lent a wil- 
ling ear to the glowing description which Buckingham recounted 
of the celebrated journey. His young melancholy was excited 
into cheerfulness, when he dwelt oa the hoped-for and surprised 
rapture with which his destined bride would receive a prince 
whose unusual gallantry spurned at the laws of political interest, 
and whose chivalric feeling had broken through state negotiation, 
and, despising to woo by treaty, had brought him to her feet to 
win her by his merits. His blood warmed at the popularity he 
would acquire by such a step, from a nation famed for its knightly 
devotion to the fair, and whose watch-word, according to one of 
its poets, has ever been, " love and the ladyes." Charles would 
have been a dull lover, indeed, had he only, like other princes, 
thought his bride not worth the fetching. He would have been 



THE SPANISH MATCH. 367 

doubly dull and undeserving had he paused to consider the bear- 
ings, the risks, or the probable absurdity of the act. There was 
a certain political danger ; but Charles, young, and a lover, refused 
to see it ; he was tearing the bonds which might bind more ignoble 
princes, but were too weak to confine him ; he rent the shackles 
which proxies force on their principals, and stood in his own 
princely strength to win a prize which has often lost the world. 

The only step subsequent to the prince's acquiescence, was to 
obtain the king's permission, a matter of little difficulty. They at- 
tacked the good-natured and simple James at a moment when his 
jovial humor would not have denied a greater boon. He had 
sense, however, to see something of the impropriety of the absence 
of Charles and Buckingham from England ; but his obtusity of 
intellect was overpowered by the craft of his favorite, and the pe- 
titioners at length obtained his unadvised sanction to the wild en- 
terprise, less by the strength of their arguments, than the persist- 
ing urgency of its expression. The prince and his companion 
further obtained a promise of secrecy ; and they saw nothing more 
wanting than the ordinary preparations for their departure. Left 
to his own reflections, however, the poor king reproached his own 
weakness ; he saw with terror that his subjects would not readily 
forgive him for committing so invaluable a pledge into the hands 
of a Catholic sovereign, who might detain Charles in order to en- 
force new exactions or demands ; and with equal terror he saw 
that even success could not possibly justify the means ; for there 
was no advantage to be obtained, and no unprejudiced censurer 
would consider the freak otherwise than as one played for the 
gratification of the will of the duke, and of an enthusiastic prince, 
whose abstract idea of chivalrous love had overcome his character 
for prudence. 

There eusued, on the return of Charles and Buckingham to the 
royal presence for despatches, a melancholy scene. There were the 
objurgations and schoolboy blubbering of the monarch, the insolent 
imperiousness of the favorite, and the silent tears and submission 
of the prince. The audacious threats of the duke wrung from 
James the assent which Buckingham required — a second permis- 
sion for their journey. A knight, Sir Francis Cottington, the 
prince's secretary, and Endymion Porter, a gentleman of the bed- 



368 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

chamber, were selected as the attendants of the Prince. The duke 
was, however, also to be accompanied bj his master of the horse, 
a man of knight's degree, Sir Richard Graham. There was a 
recapitulation of the crying scene when the two former gentlemen 
were appointed, for Sir Francis boldly pointed out the danger of 
the proceeding. Charles's countenance showed his displeasure ; 
but Buckingham was completely carried away by his overwhelm- 
ing passion. James cried, the duke swore, and the king had noth- 
ing left to do, but to wish them God speed on their amorous and 
knight-errant mission. 

There is a work, known to many and read by few, the " Epis- 
tolas Howelianse," consisting of a collection of familiar letters on 
many subjects, by a certain James Howell. The author was a 
cadet of a noble family, several members of which had been on 
the roll of knighthood. He pushed his fortunes with all the 
vigor of an aspiring younger brother. His letters exhibit him as 
agent to a glass factory at Vienna — a tutor — a companion — a 
clerk — secretary to an embassy — agent again, and finally an at- 
tache to the privy council. Master Howell, in these epistles, con- 
tinually rings the changes on the importance of attending to the 
main chance ; bewails the stagnation which non-employment throws 
round his fortunes ; or congratulates himself on the progress they 
are making, through his industry. At the period of Charles's 
visit to Madrid, he was agent there for the recovery of a vessel 
taken by unlawful seizure, and he contemplates the prince's arri- 
val with delight, viewing him as a powerful adjunct to his cause. 
He complains bitterly of the prince as showing more condescension 
to the needy Spanish poor, than politeness to the accredited agent 
of an English company. The agent's honor or ruin depended on 
the success of his mission, hence good Master Howell is occasion- 
ally and ill at ease. The success of his mission, too, hung upon 
the happy termination of the match ; a marriage he considers as 
the avant-courier of his appointments, but should some unlucky re- 
verse prevent the end he hopes for, why then, to use one of the 
worshipful agent's most favorite figures of speech — then "my 
cake is dough." His letters are the chief authority for what fol- 
lows. 

It is quite consistent with the whole character of this drama, 



THE SPANISH MATCH. 369 

that the journey should be prosecuted through France. Charles 
and his suite travelled incognito it is true, but Buckingham was 
rash enough to introduce the prince at a court-ball in Paris, where 
he perhaps saw and admired the lovely Henrietta Maria. From 
the gay court of France the errant company speedily decamped, 
hurried rapidly toward the south, and crossed the frontier just in 
time to escape the strong arm of the governor of Bayonne, stretched 
out to arrest their progress. 

On Friday the 7th of March, 1623, Charles and his attendants 
arrived at Madrid, under the guise of very homely personages. 
Buckingham took a name which has since served to cover a fugi- 
tive king of the French — that of (Thomas) Smith, and therewith 
he entered Bristol's mansion, " 'twixt the gloaming and the murk," 
with a portmanteau under his arm, while Charles waited on the 
other side of the street, not as the Prince of "Wales, but as Thomas 
Smith's brother, John. Lord Bristol did not allow the son of his 
monarch to remain long in such a situation. Charles was con- 
ducted to the house, and on being ushered into a bedchamber, he 
immediately asked for writing materials, and despatched a mes- 
senger to his father, announcing his safe arrival in the Spanish 
capital. Cottington and Porter arrived the next day ; and even 
so soon as this, a report was spreading through the city that James 
himself was in Madrid. On the evening of Saturday, Bucking- 
ham went privately to court, in his own person, and told the tale 
of the adventures of the knight to whom he had acted as squire. 
The delight of all parties was intense. Olivarez accompanied 
Buckingham on his return to the prince, to express how immeas- 
urably glad his Catholic majesty was at his coming. This proud 
minister, who was the contemporary, and perhaps the equal, of 
Richelieu, knelt and kissed the prince's hand, and " hugged his 
thighs," says Mr. Howell, like a slave as he was. Gondomar, 
too, hastened to offer his respects and congratulations to the young 
prince. At ten that night, too, came the most distinguished as he 
was the most desired visiter : Philip himself appeared in generous 
haste to welcome the person and thank the noble confidence of his 
almost brother-in-law. The meeting of the parties appears to 
have been unaffected and cordial. After the salutations and divers 
embraces which passed in the first interview, they parted late. The 

24 



370 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

stern severity of Spanish etiquette would not permit of Charles's 
introduction to the Infanta, and it was accordingly arranged that 
the princess should appear in public on Sunday, and the prince 
meet her on the Prado, just as the knight Guzman sees Inez, in 
the ancient ballad. In the afternoon of the eventful day, the 
whole court, neglecting for the occasion all sumptuary laws, ap- 
peared in all its bravery. Philip, his queen, two brothers, and 
the Infanta, were together in one carriage, and the princess, the 
cynosure of attraction, scarcely needed the blue riband which en- 
circled her arm, as a sign by which Charles might distinguish her. 
The knightly lover, who had experienced some difficulty in making 
his way through the exulting multitude, who threw up their caps 
and cried " God bless him," was in waiting, with his diminutive 
court and Count Gondomar, to view the defiling of the procession. 
The royal carriage approached, and as the eyes of the princess 
first rested on her destined lord, she blushed deeply, "which," 
adds the calculating Mr. Howell, " we hold to be an impression 
of love and affection, for the face is oftentimes a true index of the 
heart." The Infanta, at this period, was only sixteen and tall for 
her age — "a very comely lady," says the agent, "rather of a 
Flemish complexion than Spanish, fair-haired, and carried a most 
pure mixture of red and white in her face : she is full and big- 
lipped, which is held as beauty rather than a blemish." 

Charles was now honored with a complete court establishment 
and apartments in the palace ; there was revelry in camp and city ; 
and the gallantry of the journey so touched this high-minded 
people, that they declared the beautiful bride ought to have been 
made Charles's immediate reward. Gayety was at every heart 
and poesy, in the person of Lope de Vega, celebrated " the Stuart," 
and " Marie, his star." In all the festivals and carousals at court, 
Charles was not once permitted to approach "his star." The 
royal family sat together under a canopy, but there was ever some 
unwelcome intervener between the lovers, and the prince was 
compelled to satisfy his ardent soul with gazing. The worthy 
English agent records that he has seen him " have his eyes im- 
movably fixed upon the Infanta half-an-hour together, in a thought- 
ful, speculative posture, which," he sagaciously adds, " would needs 
be tedious unless affection did sweeten it." It was on one of 



THE SPANISH MATCH. 371 

these occasions that Olivarez, with less poetic truth than energy 
of expression, said that Charles watched her as a cat does a 
mouse. 

Whatever outward respect Charles may have voluntarily offered 
to the prejudices and observances of Spanish ceremony, he, and 
perhaps the blushing Infanta, thought it very cumbersome love- 
work for young hearts. Words had passed between them, it is 
true, but only through the medium of an interpreter, and always 
in the presence of the king, for Philip " sat hard by, to overhear 
all," and understand if he could, the interpretations made by Lord 
Bristol. 

Weary of this restraint, the prince soon found means, or rather 
an opportunity, to break through the pompous obstacles which 
opposed the good old plan of love-making, and he, with Endymion 
Porter to attend him, did not fail to profit by the occasion. Near 
the city, but across the river, the king had a summer-house, called 
Casa di Campo. Charles discovered that the Infanta was accus- 
tomed to go very often of a morning to gather May-dew. The 
knight and esquire, accordingly, donning a silken suit for a spring 
morning, went out betimes, and arrived without let or hindrance 
at the Casa di Campo. Their quality was a sure passport, and 
doors, immovably closed to all others, opened to them. They 
passed through the house into the garden, but to their wonder and 
disappointment, the " light of love" was not visible. The Infanta 
had not arrived, or had fled, and disappointment seemed likely to 
be the probable reward of their labor. The garden was divided 
from an adjoining orchard by a high wall ; the prince heard voices 
on the other side, perhaps heard the voice, and hastened to a 
door which formed the only communication of the two divisions. 
To try this outlet was the work of a moment ; to find it most vex- 
atiously locked, was the conviction of the next. The lover was 
at bay, and Endymion's confused brain had no resource to suggest. 
They looked at the wall. It was high, undoubtedly ; but was 
ever such a barrier too high for a king's son — a knight and a 
gallant, when it stood between him and such a " star" as the muse 
of De Vega made of the Infanta ? Charles was on the summit 
of the wall almost as soon as the thought of climbing it had first 
struck him ; with the same eagerness he sprang lightly down on 



372 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

the other side, and hastily made toward the object of his temerity. 
Unfortunately there was an old " duenna" of a marquis with her 
in quality of guardian, and the Infanta, who perchance expected 
to see the intruder, was constrained, for the sake of appearances, 
to scream with well-dissembled terror. " She gave a shriek and 
ran back." Charles followed, but the grim marquis interfered his 
unwelcome person between the lovers. " Turning to the prince, 
he fell on his knees, conjuring his highness to retire ;" he swore 
by his head, that if he admitted the prince to the company of the 
Infanta, he, the grisly guardian of the dove, might pay for it with 
his head. As the lady, meanwhile, had fled, and did not return, 
Charles was not obdurate. Maria, though she had escaped (be- 
cause seen) could not but be pleased with the proof he had given 
of his devotion, and as the old marquis continued to talk of his 
head, the prince, whose business lay more with the heart, turned 
round and walked slowly away. He advanced toward the door, 
the portal was thrown open, and thus, as Mr. Howell pithily says, 
u he came out under that wall over which he had got in." Endy- 
mion was waiting for him, and perhaps for his story, but the knight 
was sad, and his squire solemn. Charles looked an embodying 
of the idea of gloom, and Master Porter, with some ill-will, was 
compelled to observe a respectful silence. 

The Infanta and her governor hurried back to the palace, while 
her suitor and his followers were left to rail in their thoughts 
against the caprice of the ladies, and the reserve of royal masters ; 
and so ends a pretty story of " how a princess went to gather 
May-dew." 

This solitary and unsuccessful love-passage was the last effort 
which Charles made to engage the good-will of Maria. He, at 
once, retired to his apartments in the palace ; whence he seldom 
went abroad, except for the purpose of attending a bull-fight. 
Buckingham was sick a-bed, his offended nobility lay ill-disposed 
at court, and the palace residence was gradually becoming irksome 
to all parties. Charles could only have bedchamber prayers, and 
not possessing a room where he might have attended the service 
of his own church, the sacred plate and vestments he had brought 
over were never used. Moreover, the Knights of the Garter, 
Lords Carlisle and Denbigh, had well nigh set the palace on fire, 



THE SPANISH MATCH. 373 

through leaving their lighted pipes in a summer-house. The 
threatened mischief, however, was prevented by the activity of 
Master Davies, my Lord of Carlisle's barber, who " leapt down a 
great height and quenched it." Perhaps a more unfortunate ac- 
cident than this, in the eyes of a Catholic population, was a brawl 
within the royal precinct between Ballard, an English priest, and 
an English knight, Sir Edmund Varney. The prince had a page 
named Washington, lying mortally ill ; to save his soul the anx- 
ious priest hastened to the death-bed of the page ; here, however, 
he met Sir Edmund, an unflinching pillar of the English church. 
An unseemly scene ensued ; and while knight and priest passed 
from words to blows, the poor suffering page silently died, and 
soon after was consigned to the earth under a fig-tree in Lord 
Bristol's Garden. 

In the meantime, the Princess Infanta was publicly addressed 
as Princess of Wales, and as an acquaintance with the English 
language was a possession much to be desired by the bearer of so 
proud a title, the Lady Maria began " her accidence" and turned 
her mind to harsh declensions and barbarous conjugations. 
Though enthusiasm had somewhat cooled, the business continued 
to proceed ; the most serious interruption was occasioned by the 
death of the Pontiff, as it entailed many of the ensuing obstacles 
which at once began to rise. The unfinished work of Gregory 
was thought to require a da capo movement from his successor 
Urban, and the new Hierarch commenced a string of objections 
and proposals, which were of no other effect than to produce mis- 
trust and delay. Buckingham too, recovering from his sickness, 
longed to return to England, where it was now understood that 
the Pope's tardiness was founded on hopes of the prince's conver- 
sion. The people of England were alarmed and clamorous. 
Charles and the duke discontented and impatient. The latter 
urged a return, and the prince, in expressing his wishes to Philip, 
stated as his reasons, his father's age and infirmities, the murmurs 
of his people, and the fact that a fleet was at sea to meet him. 
He added, a most close argument, that the articles which had been 
signed in England bore, as a proviso, that if he did not return 
by a specified month, they should be of no validity. It honora- 
bly belied the suspicions against the Spanish Cabinet, that not 



374 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

the slightest opposition was made to the return ; proxies were 
named, and on the termination of affairs with the Pope, Maria 
was to follow Charles to England. The lady is said to have re- 
marked, that if she was not worth waiting for she was not worth 
having. Charles must have felt the remark, but the duke was 
paramount, and the wind, which favored their departure, as speed- 
ily blew away the popularity of a prince whose knightly bearing, 
modest gallantry, and high virtues, so particularly formed him for 
the favorite of a romantic nation. The treaty for the Spanish 
match was broken. 

The secret history of the French match possesses an equal in- 
terest with that of the Spanish ; but Charles only wrote to his 
bride on this occasion, and met her, on her way to him, at Can- 
terbury. 

As a further instance of the chivalrous gallantry of Charles L, 
it deserves to be recorded, that he it was who suggested a revival 
of the custom of inviting the ladies to participate in the hon- 
ors of the Garter. I have elsewhere said, that at one time, the 
ladies were regularly admitted, but nothing is known as to when 
this gallant custom was first introduced. Dr. Barrington, in his 
excellent " Lectures on Heraldry," says, that " in the earliest no- 
tice of the habit of the order having been issued to the ladies, im- 
mediately after the accession of Richard II.," they are said to 
have been " newly received into the Society of the Garter," and 
were afterward called " Ladies of the Fraternity of St. George." 
Who were admitted to this distinguished order, or how long the 
practice continued, does not appear, though it is probable it had 
fallen into disuse in the time of Henry VIII. Charles remained 
content with merely suggesting the revival of the custom, and 
" nothing," says Dr. Barrington, " seems to have been done to car- 
ry this suggestion into effect. If any one period," — adds the 
docter, most appropriately — "if any one period were more fit 
than another for doing it, it must surely be the present, when a 
lady is the sovereign of the order." 



THE KINGS OF ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS. 875 



THE KINGS OF ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS. 

FROM STUAKT TO BRUNSWICK. 

Charles II. loved the paraphernalia of courts and chivalry. 
He even designed to create two new orders of knighthood — 
namely " the Knights of the Sea," a naval order for the encour- 
agement of the sea-service ; and " the Knights of the Royal Oak," 
in memory of his deliverance, and for the reward of civil merit. 
He never went much farther than the intention. He adopted the 
first idea at another's suggestion, and straightway thought no more 
of it. The second originated with himself, and a list of persons 
was made out, on which figured the names of the intended knights. 
The matter never went further. 

At Charles's coronation, the knights of the Bath were peculiarly 
distinguished for their splendor. They were almost too gorge- 
ously attired to serve as waiters, and carry up, as they did the 
first course to the king's own table, at the coronation banquet, 
after a knight of the Garter had been to the kitchen and had eaten 
a bit of the first dish that was to be placed before his Sacred 
Majesty. 

If the king was fond of show, some at least of his knights, 
shared in the same feeling of vanity. The robes in recent times 
were worn only on occasions of ceremony and service. The king 
revived a fashion which his knights followed, and which sober 
people (who were not knights) called a ridiculous humor. 
They were " so proud of their coats," as the expression went, 
that they not only wore them at home, but went about in them, 
and even rode about the park with them on. Mr. Pepys is par- 
ticularly indignant on this matter especially so, when told that 
the Duke of Monmouth and Lord Oxford were seen, " in a hack- 



376 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

ney-coaeli, with two footmen in the park with their robes on ; which," 
adds the censor, " is a most scandalous thing, so as all gravity may 
be said to be lost, among us." There was more danger of what 
Pepys calls " gravity" being lost, when the Order, at command 
of the Sovereign head, elected such men as the Elector of Saxony, 
who had no other distinction but that of being a good drinker. 

I do not know what the rule now may be in St. George's 
Chapel, but in the reign of Charles II., a singular regulation is 
noticed by Pepys. He went in good company to the royal chapel, 
where he was placed, by Dr. Childe, the organist, "among the 
knights' stalls, and pretty the observation," he adds, " that no man, 
but a woman, may sit in a knight's place, where any brass plates 
are set." What follows is also, in some degree, germane to our 
purpose. " Hither come cushions to us, and a young singing boy 
to bring us a copy of the anthem to be sung. And here, for our 
sakes, had this anthem and the great service sung extraordinary, 
only to entertain us. Great bowing by all the people, the poor 
knights particularly, toward the altar." 

Charles II. was the first monarch who allowed the Knights of 
the Garter to wear, as at present, the star of the order on the 
breast of the coat. Our present queen has renewed in her gracious 
person, the custom that was once observed, if we may believe 
Ashmole, by the ladies, that is, the wives of Knights of the Garter 
— namely, of wearing the symbol of the order as a jewelled badge, 
or a bracelet, on the arm. This is in better taste than the mode 
adopted by Lady Castlereagh, at the gay doings attendant upon 
the sitting of the Congress of Vienna ; where the noble lady in 
question appeared at court with her husband's jewelled garter, as 
a bandeau, round her forehead ! 

James II. has had not merely his apologists but his defenders. 
He had far more of the knightly character than is commonly sup- 
posed. For a long time he labored under the disadvantage of 
being represented, in England, by historians only of the Orange 
faction. Poor Richard the Third has suffered by a similar mis- 
fortune. He was wicked enough, but he was not the monster de- 
scribed by the Tudor historians and dramatists. 

James, in his youth, had as daring and as crafty a spirit as ever 
distinguished the most audacious of pages. The tact by the em- 



THE KINGS OF ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS. 377 

ployment of which he successfully made his escape from the re- 
publican guards who kept him imprisoned at St. James's, would 
alone be sufficient proof of this. When Duke of York, he had the 
compliment paid to him by Conde, that if ever there was a man 
without fear it was he. Under Turenne he earned a reputation 
of which any knight might be proud ; and in the service of Spain, 
he won praise for courage, from leaders whose bravery was a theme 
for eulogy in every mouth. 

Partisans, not of his own faction, have censured his going pub- 
licly to mass soon after his accession ; but it must be remembered 
that the Knights of the Garter, in the collar of their order, com- 
placently accompanied him, and that the Duke of Norfolk was the 
only knight who left him at the door of the chapel. 

He had little of the knight in him in his method of love, if one 
may so speak. He cared little for beauty ; so little, that his brother 
Charles remarked that he believed James selected his mistresses 
by way of penance. He was coarsely minded, and neither prac- 
tised fidelity nor expected it in others. Whatever he may have 
been in battle, there was little of the refinement of chivalry about 
him in the bower. It was said of Louis XIV. and his successor, 
that if they were outrageously unfaithful to their consorts, they 
never failed to treat them with the greatest politeness. James 
lacked even this little remnant of chivalrous feeling ; and he was 
barely courteous to his consort till adversity taught him the worth 
of Mary of Modena. 

He was arrogant in prosperity, but the slightest check dread- 
fully depressed him, and it is hardly necessary to say that he who 
is easily elated or easily depressed, has little in him of the hero. 
His conduct when his throne was menaced was that of a poor cra- 
ven. It had not about it the dignity of even a decent submission. 
He rose again, however, to the heroic when he attempted to recover 
liis kingdom, and took the field for that purpose. This conduct 
has been alluded to by a zealous and impartial writer in the " Gen- 
tleman's Magazine," for November, 1855. "After the battle of 
the Boyne," he says, " the Orange party circulated the story that 
James had acted in the most cowardly manner, and fled from the 
field before the issue was decided. Not only was this, in a very 
short time believed, but even sensible historians adopted it, and it 



378 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

came down to us as an historical fact. Now in the secret archives 
of France there are several letters which passed between Queen 
Mary and the Earl of Tyrconnel, and these together with some of 
the secret papers, dispose at once of the whole story. It has now 
been placed beyond a doubt, that the king was forced from the 
field. Even when the day was lost and the Dutch veterans had 
routed the half-armed and undisciplined Irish, James rallied a part 
of the French troops, and was leading them on, when Tyrconnel 
and Lauzun interposed, pointed out the madness of the attempt, 
and seizing the reins of his horse, compelled him to retreat." 

This is perhaps proving a little too much, for if the day was 
lost, it was not bravery, but rashness, that sought to regain it ; and 
it is the first merit of a knight, the great merit of a general, to dis- 
cern when blood may be spilled to advantage. As for the archives 
in France, one would like to know upon what authority the papers 
preserved there make their assertions. Documents are exceed- 
ingly valuable to historians, but they are not always trustworthy. 
The archives of France may contain Canrobert's letter explaining 
how he was compelled to put constraint upon the bravery of Prince 
Napoleon, and send him home, in consequence of severe indisposi- 
tion. And yet the popular voice has since applied a very uncom- 
plimentary surname to the Prince — quite as severe, but not so 
unsavory, as that which the people of Drogheda still apply to 
James. In either case there is considerable uncertainty. I am 
inclined to believe the best of both of these illustrious personages, 
but seeing that the uncertainty is great, I am not sure that Scarron 
was wrong when he said that the best way of writing history was 
by writing epigrams, pointed so as to prick everybody. 

Cottington (Stafford's Letters) tells us of a domestic trouble in 
which James was concerned with one of his knights. The king's 
perplexities about religion began early. " The nurse is a Roman 
Catholic, to whom Sir John Tunston offered the oath of allegiance, 
and she refused it ; whereupon there grew a great noise both in 
the town and court ; and the queen afflicted herself with extreme 
passion upon knowledge of a resolution to change the woman. Yet 
after much tampering with the nurse to convert her, she was let 
alone, to quiet the queen." The dissension is said to have so 
troubled the nurse, as also to have injured the child, and never 



THE KINGS OF ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS. 379 

had knight or king more difficult task than James, in his desire to 
please all parties. 

It was one of the characteristics of a knight to bear adversity 
without repining ; and if Dodd may be believed, James II. was 
distinguished for this great moral courage in his adversity. The 
passage in Dodd's Church History is worth extracting, though 
somewhat long : " James was never once heard to repine at his 
misfortune. He willingly heard read the scurrilous pamphlets 
that were daily published in England against him. If at any time 
he showed himself touched, it was to hear of the misfortunes of 
those gentlemen who suffered on his account. He would often 
entertain those about him with the disorders of his youth, but it 
was with a public detestation of them, and an admonition to others 
not to follow his example. The very newspapers were to him a 
lesson of morality ; and the daily occurrences, both in the field and 
the cabinet, were looked upon by him, not as the result of second 
causes, but as providential measures to chastise both nations and 
private persons, according to their deserts. He would sometimes 
say that the exalted state of a king was attended with this great 
misfortune, that he lived out of the reach of reproof, and mentioned 
himself as an example. He read daily a chapter in the Bible, 
and another in that excellent book, ' The Following of Christ.' In 
his last illness he publicly forgave all his enemies, and several of 
them by name, especially the Prince of Orange, whom he acknowl- 
edged to be his greatest friend, as being the person whom Provi- 
dence had made use of to scourge him and humble him in the 
manner he had done, in order to save his soul." As something 
very nearly approaching to reality, this is. more pleasing than the 
details of dying knights in romance, who after hacking at one an- 
other for an hour, mutually compliment each other's courage, and 
die in the happiest frame of mind possible. Some one speaking 
of this king, and of Innocent II., made an apt remark, worth the 
quoting ; namely, that " he wished for the peace of mankind that 
the pope had turned papist, and the king of England, protestant !" 
How far the latter was from this desired consummation is wittily 
expressed in the epitaph on James, made by one of the poet-chev- 
aliers, or, as some say, by one of the abbes who used to lounge 
about the terrace of St. Germains. 



380 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

" C'est ici que Jacques Second, 
Sans ministres et sans maitresses, 
Le matin allait a la messe, 
Et le soir allait au sermon." 

I have noticed, in a previous page, the very scant courtesy 
which the queen of Charles I. met with at the hands of a Com- 
monwealth admiral. The courtesy of some of the Stuart knights 
toward royal ladies was not, however, of a much more gallant 
aspect. I will illustrate this by an anecdote told by M. Macaulay 
in the fourth volume of his history. The spirit of the Jacobites 
in William's reign had been excited by the news of the fall of 
Mons. ... "In the parks the malcontents wore their biggest 
looks, and talked sedition in their loudest tones. The most con- 
spicuous among these swaggerers was Sir John Fenwick, who 
had in the late reign been high in favor and military command, 
and was now an indefatigable agitator and conspirator. In his 
exaltation he forgot the courtesy which man owes to woman. 
He had more than once made himself conspicuous by his imper- 
tinence to the queen. He now ostentatiously put himself in her 
way when she took her airing, and while all around him uncov- 
ered and bowed low, gave her a rude stare, and cocked his hat in 
her face. The affront was not only brutal but cowardly. For 
the law had provided no punishment for mere impertinence, how- 
ever gross ; and the king was the only gentleman and soldier in 
the king was the only gentleman and soldier in the kingdom who 
could not protect his wife from contumely with his sword. All 
that the queen could do was to order the park-keepers not to 
admit Sir John again within the gates. But long after her death 
a day came when he had reason to wish that he had restrained 
his insolence. He found, by terrible proof, that of all the Jaco- 
bites, the most desperate assassins not excepted, he was the only 
one for whom William felt an intense personal aversion." 

The portrait of William III. as drawn by Burnet, does not 
wear any very strong resemblance to a hero. The " Roman nose 
and bright sparkling eyes," are the most striking features, but the 
" countenance composed of gravity and authority," has more of 
the magistrate than the man at arms. Nevertheless, and in 
despite of his being always asthmatical, with lungs oppressed by 



THE KINGS OP ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS. 381 

the dregs of small-pox, and the slow and " disgusting dryness" 
of his speech, there was something chivalrous in the character of 
William. In " the day of battle he was all fire, though without 
passion; he was then everywhere, and looked to everything. 
His genius," says Burnet in another paragraph, " lay chiefly in 
war, in which his courage was more admired than his conduct. 
Great errors were often committed by him; but his heroical 
courage set things right, as it inflamed those who were about 
him." In connection with this part of his character may be 
noticed the fact that he procured a parliamentary sanction for the 
establishment of a standing army. His character, in other re- 
spects, is not badly illustrated by a remark which he made, when 
Prince of Orange, to Sir W. Temple, touching Charles II. 
" Was ever anything so hot and so cold as this court of yours ? 
Will the king, who is so often at sea, never learn the word that I 
shall never forget, since my last passage, when in a great storm 
the captain was crying out to the man at the helm, all night, 
' Steady, steady, steady !' " He was the first of our kings who 
would not touch for the evil. He would leave the working of all 
miracles, he said, to God alone. The half-chivalrous, half- 
religious, custom of washing the feet of the poor on Maundy 
Thursday, was also discontinued by this prince, the last of the 
heroic five Princes of Orange. 

Great as William was in battle, he perhaps never exhibited 
more of the true quality of bravery than when on his voyage to 
Holland in 1691, he left the fleet, commanded by Sir Cloudesley 
Shovel and Sir George Rooke, and in the midst of a thick fog 
attempted, with some noblemen of his retinue, to land in an open 
boat. " The danger," says Mr. Macaulay, who may be said to have 
painted the incident in a few words, " proved more serious than 
they had expected." It had been supposed that in an hour the 
party would be on shore. But great masses of floating ice impe- 
ded the progress of the skiff; the night came on, the fog grew 
thicker, the waves broke over the king and the courtiers. Once 
the keel struck on a sandbank, and was with great difficulty got 
off. The hardiest mariners showed some signs of uneasiness, but 
William through the whole night was as composed as if he had 
been in the drawing-room at Kensington. " For shame," he said 



382 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

to one of the dismayed sailors, " are you afraid to die in my 
company?" The vehis Ocesarem was, certainly, not finer than 
this. 

The consort of Queen Anne was of a less chivalrous spirit 
than William. Coxe says of him, that even in the battle-field he 
did not forget the dinner-hour, and he appears to have had more 
stomach for feeding than fighting. Of George I., the best that 
can be said of him in his knightly capacity, has been said of 
him, by Smollet, in the remark, that this prince was a circumspect 
general. He did not, however, lack either courage or impetuosity. 
He may have learned circumspection under William of Orange. 
Courage was the common possession of all the Brunswick princes. 
Of some of them, it formed the solitary virtue. But of George 
I., whom it was the fashion of poets, aspiring to the laureatship, 
to call the great, it can not be said, as was remarked of Philip 
IV. of Spain, when he took the title of " Great," " He has be- 
come great, as a ditch becomes great, by losing the land which 
belonged to it." 

One more custom of chivalry observed in this reign, went 
finally out in that of George II. I allude to the custom of giving 
hostages. According to the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, " two 
persons of rank were to reside in France, in that capacity, as 
sureties to France that Great Britain should restore certain of its 
conquests in America and the West Indies." The " Chevalier," 
Prince Charles Edward, accounted this as a great indignity to 
England, and one which, he said, he would not have suffered if 
he had been in possession of his rights. 

The age of chivalry, in the old-fashioned sense of the word, 
went out before Burke pronounced it as having departed. I do 
not think it survived till the reign of George II. In that reign 
chivalry was defunct, but there was an exclusive class, whose 
numbers arrogated to themselves that nice sense of honor which 
was supposed, in olden times, to have especially distinguished the 
knight. The people alluded to were par excellence, the people of 
" fashion." The gentlemen who guarded, or who were supposed 
to guard, the brightest principle of chivalry, were self-styled 
rather than universally acknowledged, " men of honor." 

The man of honor has been painted by " one of themselves." 



THE KINGS OF ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS. 383 

The Earl of Chesterfield spoke with connoissance de fait, when 
he treated of the theme ; and his lordship, whose complacency on 
this occasion, does not permit him to see that his wit is pointed 
against himself, tells a story without the slightest recollection of 
the pithy saying of the old bard, " De te fabula narratur." 

" A man of honor," says Lord Chesterfield, " is one who per- 
emptorily affirms himself to be so, and who will cut anybody's 
throat that questions it, even upon the best grounds. He is infi- 
nitely above the restraints which the laws of God or man lay 
upon vulgar minds, and knows no other ties but those of honor, 
of which word he is to be the sole expounder. He must strictly 
advocate a party denomination, though he may be utterly regard- 
less of its principles. His expense should exceed his income con- 
siderably, not for the necessaries, but for the superfluities of life, 
that the debts he contracts may do him honor. There should be 
a haughtiness and insolence in his deportment, which is supposed 
to result from conscious honor. If he be choleric and wrong- 
headed into the bargain, with a good deal of animal courage, he 
acquires the glorious character of a man of honor ; and if all 
these qualifications are duly seasoned with the genteelest vices, 
the man of honor is complete ; anything his wife, children, ser- 
vants, or tradesmen, may think to the contrary, notwithstanding." 

Lord Chesterfield goes on to exemplify the then modern chiv- 
alrous guardian of honor, by drawing the portrait of a friend 
under an assumed name. He paints a certain " Belville" of whom 
his male friends are proud, his female friends fond, and in whom 
his party glories as a living example — frequently making that 
example the authority for their own conduct. He has lost a for- 
tune by extravagance and gambling ; he is uneasy only as to how 
his honor is to be intact by acquitting his liabilities from " play." 
He must raise money at any price, for, as he says, " I would 
rather suffer the greatest incumbrance upon my fortune, than the 
least blemish upon my honor." His privilege as a peer will pre- 
serve him from those " clamorous rascals, the tradesmen ; and lest 
he should not be able to get money by any other means, to pay 
his " debts of honor," he writes to the prime minister and offers 
to sell his vote and conscience for the consideration of fifteen 
hundred pounds. He exacts his money before he records Ins 



384 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

vote, persuaded as he is that the minister will not be the first per- 
son that ever questioned the honor of the chivalrous Belville. 

The modern knight has, of course, a lady love. The latter is 
as much like Guinever, of good King Arthur's time, as can well 
be ; and she has a husband who is more suspicious and jealous 
than the founder of the chivalrous Round Table. " Belville" can 
not imagine how the lady's husband can be suspicious, for he and 
Belville had have been play-fellows, school-fellows, and sworn 
friends in manhood. Consequently, Belville thinks that wrong 
may be committed in all confidence and security. " However," 
he writes to the lady, " be convinced that you are in the hands of 
a man of honor, who will not suffer you to be ill-used, and should 
my friend proceed to any disagreeable extremities with you, de- 
pend upon it, I will cut the c 's throat for him." 

Life in love, so in lying. He writes to an acquaintance that he 

had * told a d d lie last night in a mixed company," and had 

challenged a " formal old dog," who had insinuated that u Belville" 
had violated the truth. The latter requests his " dear Charles" to 
be his second — "the booby," he writes of the adversary who had 
detected him in a lie, " was hardly worth my resentment, but you 
know my delicacy where honor is concerned." 

Lord Chesterfield wrote more than one paper on the subject of 
men of honor. For these I refer the reader to his lordship's 
works. I will quote no further from them than to show a distinc- 
tion, which the author draws with some ingenuity. " I must ob- 
serve," he says, " that there is a great difference between a Man 
of Honor and a Person of Honor. By Persons of Honor 
were meant, in the latter part of the last century, bad authors and 
poets of noble birth, who were but just not fools enough to prefix 
their names in great letters to the prologues, epilogues, and some- 
times even the plays with which they entertained the public. But 
now that our nobility are too generous to interfere in the trade of 
us poor, professed authors" (his lordship is writing anonymously, 
in the World), "or to eclipse our performances by the distin- 
guished and superior excellency and lustre of theirs ; the meaning 
at present of a Person of Honor is reduced to the simple idea 
of a Person of Illustrious Birth." 

The chivalrous courage of one of our admirals at the close of 



THE KINGS OF ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS. 385 

the reign of George II., very naturally excited the admiration of 
Walpole. "What milksops," lie writes in 17 GO, "the Marlbor- 
oughs and Turennes, the Blakes and Van Tromps appear now, 
who whipped into winter quarters and into ports the moment their 
nose looked blue. Sir Cloudesley Shovel said that an admiral 
deserved to be broken who kept great ships out after the end of 
September ; and to be shot, if after October. There is Hawke in 
the bay, weathering this winter (January), after conquering in a 
storm." 

George III. was king during a longer period than any other 
sovereign of England ; and the wars and disasters of his reign 
were more gigantic than those of any other period. He was little 
of a soldier himself; was, however, constitutionally brave; and 
had his courage and powers tested by other than military matters. 
The politics of his reign wore his spirit more than if he had been 
engaged in carrying on operations against an enemy. During 
the first ten years after his accession, there were not less than 
seven administrations ; and the cabinets of Newcastle and Bute, 
Grenville and Rockingham, Grafton and North, Shelburne and 
Portland, were but so many camps, the leaders in which worried 
the poor monarch worse than the Greeks badgered unhappy Aga- 
memnon. Under the administration of Pitt he was hardly more 
at his ease, and in no degree more so under that of Addington, or 
that of All the Talents, and of Spencer Perceval. An active 
life of warfare could not have more worn the spirit and health of 
this king than political intrigues did ; intrigues, however, be it 
said, into which he himself plunged with no inconsiderable delight, 
and with slender satisfactory results. 

He w T as fond of the display of knightly ceremonies, and was 
never more pleased than when he was arranging the ceremonies 
of installation, and turning the simple gentlemen into knights. 
Of the sons who succeeded him, George IV. was least like him 
in good principle of any sort, while William IV. surpassed him 
in the circumstance of his having been in action, where he bore 
himself spiritedly. The race indeed has ever been brave, and I 
do not know that I can better close the chapter than with an 
illustration of the " Battle-cry of Brunswick." 

25 



THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

THE BATTLE-CRY OF BRUNSWICK. 

The " Battle-cry of Brunswick" deserves to be commemorated 
among the acts of chivalry. Miss Benger, in her " Memoirs of 
Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia," relates that Christian, Duke of 
Brunswick, was touched alike by the deep misfortunes, and the 
cheerful patience of that unhappy queem Indignant at the neg- 
lect with which she was treated by her father, James I. of England, 
and her uncle, Frederick of Denmark, Duke Christian " seemed 
suddenly inspired by a sentiment of chivalric devotion, as far re- 
moved from vulgar gallantry as heroism from ferocity. Snatching 
from her hand a glove, which he first raised with reverence to 
his lips, he placed it in his Spanish hat, as a triumphal plume 
which, for her sake, he ever after wore as a martial ornament ; 
then drawing his sword he took a solemn oath never to lay down 
arms until he should see the King and Queen of Bohemia rein- 
stated in the Palatinate. No sooner had Christian taken this en- 
gagement than he eagerly proclaimed it to the world, by substi- 
tuting on his ensign, instead of his denunciation of priests, an in- 
telligible invocation to Elizabeth in the words ' For God and for 
her !' Fur Gott und fur sie /" 

" Flash swords ! fly pennons ! helm and shield 

Go glittering forth in proud array ! 
Haste knight and noble to the field, 

Your pages wait, your chargers neigh. 
Up ! gentlemen of Germany ! 

Who love to be where strife is seen, 
For Brunswick leads the fight to-day, 

For God and the Queen ! 

" Let them to-day, for fame who sigh, 

And seek the laurels of the brave ; 
Or they who long, 'ere night, to lie 

Within a soldier's honored grave, 
Round Brunswick's banner take their stand ; 

'Twill float around the bloody scene, 
As long as foeman walks the land, 

'Gainst God and the Queen. 

M Draw, Barons, whose proud homes are placed 
In many a dark and craig-topped tower ; 
Forward, ye knights, who have been graced 
In tourney lists and ladies' bower. 



THE KINGS OF ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS. 387 

And be your country's good the cause 

Of all this proud and mortal stir, 
While Brunswick his true sabre draws 

Tor God and for her ! 

" To Him we look for such good aid 

As knights may not be shamed to ask, 
For vainly drawn would be each blade, 

And weakly fitted to its task, 
Each lance Ave wield, did we forget 

When loud we raise our battle-cry, 
For old Bohemia's Queen, to set 

Our hopes with God on high." 

The original superscription on the banner of Brunswick was 
the very energetic line : " Christian of Brunswick, the friend of 
God and the enemy of priests." Nay lor, in his " Civil and Mili- 
tary History of Germany," says, that the Duke imprinted the same 
legend on the money which he had coined out of the plate of which, 
he had plundered the convents, and he adds, in a note derived 
from Galetti, that " the greater part of the money coined by Chris- 
tian was derived from twelve silver statues of the apostles, which 
the bigotry of preceding ages had consecrated, in the cathedral of 
Munster." When the Duke was accused of impiety by some of 
his followers, he sheltered himself under the authority of Scripture ; 
and pretended to have only realized the ancient precept : " Go 
hence, into all parts of the earth !" 

Having seen the English Kings as knights, let us look at a few 
of the men whom they knighted. 



388 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 



RECIPIENTS OF KNIGHTHOOD. 

" The dew of grace bless our new knights to-day." 

Beaumont and Fletcher. 

The Conquest was productive of a far more than average quan- 
tity of knights. Indeed, I think it may be asserted without fear 
of contradiction, that the first and the last William, and James I. 
were more addicted to dubbing knights than any other of our sov- 
ereigns. The good-natured William IV. created them in such 
profusion that, at last, gentlemen at the head of deputations ap- 
peared in the royal presence with a mysterious dread lest, in spite 
of themselves, they should be compelled to undergo a chivalric 
metamorphosis, at the hands of the " sea king." The honor was 
so constantly inflicted, that the recipients were massed together by 
"John Bull" as "The Thousand and one ( K) nights !" 

William the Conqueror was not so lavish in accolades as his 
descendant of remoter days, nor was he so off-handed in the way 
of administering the distinction. He drew his sword with solem- 
nity, laid it on the shoulder before him with a sort of majestic 
composure, and throughout the ceremony looked as calm as dignity 
required. William is said to have ennobled or knighted his cook. 
He does not stand alone in having so acted : for, unless I am sin- 
gularly mistaken, the great Louis tied some small cross of chivalry 
to the button-hole of the immortal Vatel. William's act, however, 
undoubtedly gave dignity to that department in palaces, whence 
many princes have derived their only pleasure. It was from him 
that there passed into the palace of France the term " Ofiiciers de 
Service," a term which has been appropriated by others of less 
elevated degree than those whom it originally served to distinguish. 
The term has led to a standing joke in such dwellings. " Qui 
vive ?" exclaims a sentinel in one of the base passages, as one of 



RECIPIENTS OF KNIGHTHOOD. 389 

these officials draws near at night. " Officier," is the reply of the 
modest official in question. " Quel officier ?" asks the guard. 
" Officier de service !" proudly answers he who is thus questioned ; 
whereupon the soldier smilingly utters " Passe, Caramel !" and the 
royal officer — not of the body-guard, passes, as smilingly, on Ins 
way. 

But, to return from Caramel to the Conqueror, I have to ob- 
serve, that the cook whom William knighted bore an unmusical, if 
not an unsavory, name. The culinary artist was called Tezelin. 
The service by which he had won knighthood consisted in the in- 
vention of a white soup for maigre days. The hungry but ortho- 
dox William had been accustomed to swallow a thin broth " a l'eau 
de savon ;" but Tezelin placed before him a tureen full of an or- 
thodox yet appetizing liquid, which he distinguished by the name 
of Dillegrout. The name is not promising, particularly the last 
syllable, but the dish could not have been a bad one. William 
created the inventor " chevalier de l'office," and Sir Caramel Tez- 
elin was farther gratified by being made Lord of the Manor of 
Addington. Many a manor had been the wages of less honest 
service. 

The Tiercelins are descendants of the Tezelins ; and it has often 
struck me as curious that of two recently-deceased holders of that 
name, one, a cutler in England, was famous for the excellence of 
his carving-knives ; and the other, an actor in France, used to 
maintain that the first of comic parts was the compound cook- 
coachman in Moliere's " Avare." Thus did they seem to prove 
their descent from the culinary chivalry of William of Normandy. 

But there are other samples of William's knights to be noticed. 
Among the followers who landed with him between Pevensey and 
Hastings, was a Robert who, for want of a surname, and because 
of his sinews, was called Robert le Fort, or " Strong." It would 
have gone ill with William on the bloody day on which he won a 
throne, had it not been for this Robert le Fort, who interposed his 
escu or shield, between the skull of the Norman and the battle-axe 
of a Saxon warrior. This opportune service made a " Sieur Rob- 
ert" of him who rendered it, and on the coat-of-arms awarded to 
the new knight was inscribed the device which yet belongs to the 
Fortescues; — "Forte Scutum Salus Ducum," — a strong shield is 



390 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

the salvation of dukes — or leaders, as the word implies. The 
Duke of Xormandy could not have devised a more appropriate 
motto ; but he was probably helped to it by the learning and ready 
wit of his chaplain. 

The danger into which William rushed that day was productive 
of dignity to more than one individual. Thus, we hear of a soldier 
who, on finding Williain unhorsed, and his helmet beaten into his 
face, remounted his commander after cleverly extricating his head 
from the battered load of iron that was about it. William, later 
in the day, came upon the trusty squire, fainting from the loss of 
a leg and a thigh. " You gave me air when I lacked it," said the 
Conqueror, " and such be, henceforth, thy name ; and for thy lost 
leg and thigh, thou shalt carry them, from this day, on thy shield of 
arms." The maimed knight was made lord of broad lands in 
Derbyshire ; and his descendants, the Eyres, still bear a leg and 
a thigh in armor, for their crest. It is too pretty a story to lose, 
but if the account of these knight-makings be correct, some doubt 
must be attached to that of the devices, if, as some assert, armorial 
bearings were not used until many years subsequent to the battle 
of Hastings. The stories are, no doubt, substantially true. Wil- 
liam, like James III. of Scotland, was addicted to knighting and 
ennobling any individuals who rendered him the peculiar pleasures 
he most coveted. Pitscottie asserts that the latter king conferred 
his favors on masons and fiddlers ; and we are told that he not 
only made a knight of Cochrane, a mason, but also raised him to 
the dignity of Earl of Mar. Cochrane, however, was an architect, 
but he would have been none the worse had he been a mason — 
at least, had he been a man and mason of such quality as Hugh 
Millar and Allan Cuningham. 

Although it has been often repeated that there were no knights, 
in the proper sense of that word, before the period of William 
the Conqueror, this must be accepted with such amount of excep- 
tion as to be almost equivalent to a denial of the assertion. There 
were knights before the Conquest, but the systems differed. Thus 
we know from Collier's Ecclesiastical History that Athelstan was 
knighted by Alfred ; and this is said to have been the first in- 
stance of the performance of the ceremony that can be discovered. 
Here a^ain, however, a question arises. Collier has William of 



RECIPIENTS OF KNIGHTHOOD. 391 

Malmesbury for his authority. The words of this old author are : 
4i Athelstane's grandfather, Alfred, seeing and embracing him 
affectionately, when he was a boy of astonishing beauty and grace- 
ful manners, had most devoutly prayed that his government 
might be prosperous ; indeed, he had made him a knight unusually 
early, giving him a scarlet cloak, a belt studded with diamonds, 
and a Saxon sword with a golden scabbard." This, and similar 
instances which might be cited, is supposed by some to prove the 
existence of knights as a distinct order among the Saxons, while 
others think that it may amount to nothing more than the first 
bestowing of arms. Louis le Debonnaire, it is remarked, ense 
accinctus est, received his arms at thirteen years old. But this 
was in some degree " knighting," for we read in Leland's History 
of Ireland, of Irish knighthood being conferred on recipients only 
seven years old. 

If William the Conqueror made many knights in order to cele- 
brate his conquest, the gentlemen with new honors did not always 
obtain peaceable possession of the estates which were sometimes 
added to the title. Here is an instance in the case of the ancient 
family of the Kinnersleys. William's commissioners had appeared 
in Herefordshire, and in course of their predatory excursion, they 
came before the castle of John de Kinnersly, an old man, who is 
described as a knight, albeit some assert that there were no more 
knights in England before the conquest than there was rain on the 
earth before the flood. The old man who was blind, stood at his 
castle-gate in front of a semicircle formed by his twelve sons. 
Each had sword on thigh and halberd in hand. When the sheriffs 
and other commissioners asked him by what tenure he held his 
castle and estates, blind John exclaimed, " By my arms ; by sword 
and spear ; and by the same Avill keep them !" To which all his 
lively lads uttered a vigorous " Ay, ay," and the Norman com- 
missioners were so satisfied with the title, that they did not ven- 
ture to further question the same, but left the possessor of castle 
and land undisturbed in that possession which is said to be nine 
points out of the ten required by the law. 

During many reigns, no man was knighted, but who was of 
some ' ; quality," and generally because he was particularly useful 
to his own or succeeding generations. These require no notice. 



392 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

Some of these introduced customs that are worth noticing, and 
here is a sample. 

Among the lucky individuals knighted by Edward I., Sir 
William Baud holds a conspicuous place. Sir William gave 
rise to a curious custom, which was long observed in Old 
St. Paul's. During his lifetime, the dean and chapter had 
made over to him some laud in Essex. In return, or perhaps in 
" service" for this, the knight presented at the high altar of the 
cathedral, a doe " sweet and seasonable," on the conversion of St. 
Paul, in winter ; and a buck, in equally fitting condition, on the 
commemoration of St. Paul in summer. The venison was for the 
especial eating of the canons resident. The doe was carried to 
the altar by one man, surrounded by processional priests, and he 
was to have nothing for his trouble. The buck had several bearers 
and a more numerous accompaniment of priests, who disbursed 
the magnificent sum of twelve pence to the carriers. The knight's 
buck made the dean and chapter so hilarious that when they ap- 
peared at the doors of the cathedral to escort it to the altar, they 
wore copes and -vestments, and their reverences wore wreaths of 
roses on their solemn heads ! Indeed, there was a special dress 
for the cathedral clergy on either day; each, according to the 
occasion, being ornamented with figures of bucks or does. At 
the altar, the dean sent the body to be baked, but the head was 
cut off and carried on a pike to the western door, where the hunts- 
men blew a mort, and the notes proclaiming the death of the stag 
were taken up and repeated by the " homers" of the city, who 
received a trifle from the rosy dean and chapter, for thus increas- 
ing the noisy importance of the occasion. 

There is something, too, worthy of notice in the fact that Rich- 
ard II. was the first king who knighted a London tradesman. 
Walworth, who struck down Wat Tyler, and who was knighted 
by that king for his good service, was engaged in commercial pur- 
suits. This lord mayor, however, derived very considerable profits 
from pursuits less creditable to him. He was the owner of tene- 
ments by the water side, which were of the very worst reputation, 
but which brought him a very considerable yearly revenue. Sir 
William pocketed this with the imperially-complacent remark of 
" non olet." The dagger in the city arms is not in memory of 



RECIPIENTS OF KNIGHTHOOD. 393 

this deed ; it simply represents the sword of St. Paul, and it has 
decorated the city shield since the first existence of a London 
municipality. 

Walworth then is not a very respectable knight. We find one 
of better character in a knight of ancient family name, whose 
deeds merit some passing record. 

Sir Robert Umfreville, a knight of the Garter, who owed his 
honors to the unfortunate Henry VI., found leisure, despite the 
busy and troubled times in which he lived, to found the Chantry 
of Farmacres, near Ravensworth, where two chaplains were reg- 
ularly to officiate according to the law of Sarum. If the knight's 
charity, was great, his expectations of benefit were not small. 
The chaplains were daily to perform service for the benefit of the 
souls of the founder, and of all his kith, kin, and kindred. Nay, 
more than this, service was to be performed for the soul's profit 
of all knights of the Garter, as long as the order existed, and of 
all the proprietors of the estate of Farmacres. The chaplains 
were to reside, board, and sleep, under the roof of the chapel. 
Once every two years the pious will of the founder allowed them 
a renewal of costume, consisting of " a sad and sober vest sweep- 
ing to their heels." Upon one point Sir Robert was uncommonly 
strict ; he would not allow of the presence of a female in the 
chapel, under any pretence whatever — even as a servant to the 
chaplains — quia frequenter dum colitur Martha, expellitur Maria. 
The latter, too, were bound to exercise no office of a secular na- 
ture, especially that of bailiff. To a little secular amusement, 
however, the sagacious knight did not object, and two months' 
leave of absence was allowed to the chaplains every year ; and 
doubtless no questions were asked, on their return, as to how it 
had been employed. 

While touching on the matters which occurred during the reign 
of that unhappy Lancastrian king, Henry VI., I will observe that 
we have foreign testimony to the fact of our civil wars having 
been carried on with more knightly courtesy than had hitherto 
been the case in any other country. " In my humble opinion," 
says Comines, " England is, of all the dominions with which I am 
acquainted, the one alone in which a public interest is properly 
treated. There is no violence employed against the people, and 



394 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

in war-time no edifice is destroyed or injured by the belligerents. 
The fate and misery of war falls heaviest on those immediately 
concerned in carrying it on." He alludes particularly to the 
knights and nobles ; but it is clear that, let war be carried on in 
ever so knightly a fashion, the people must be the chief sufferers. 
The warehouses may stand, but so also will commerce — very still 
and unproductive. 

Courteous as the knights of this age may have been, they were 
by no means incorruptible. There were many of them in the 
service of Edward IV., who were the pensioners of Louis XI., 
who used to delight in exhibiting their names at the foot of ac- 
knowledgments for money received. One official, however, Hast- 
ings, would never attach his autograph to his receipt, but he had 
no scruples with regard to taking the money. The Czar buys 
Prussian service after the fashion of Louis XL 

Henry VIII. cared more for merit than birth in the knights 
whom he created. He first recognised the abilities of him who 
was afterward Sir John Mason, the eminent statesman of five 
reigns. This king was so pleased with an oration delivered in his 
presence by Mason, at All Souls, Oxford, that he took upon him- 
self the charge of having him educated abroad, as one likely to 
prove an able minister of state. He was a faithful servant to the 
king. Elizabeth had one as gallant in Sir Henry Unton, who 
challenged the great Guise for speaking lightly of his royal mis- 
tress. The motives for the royal patronage of these knights was 
better than that which moved Richard I. when he raised the lowly- 
born "Will Briewer to favoriteship and knighthood. Henry Vin. 
was fond of conferring the honor of chivalry on those who served 
him well; thus of the Cornish lawyer, Trigonnel, he made a 
knight, with forty pounds a year to help him to keep up the dig- 
nity, in acknowledgment of the ability with which, as proctor, he 
had conducted the case of divorce against Queen Katharine. It 
was better service than John Tirrell rendered to Richard in., 
who knighted him for his aid in the murder of the young princes, 
on which occasion he kept the keys of the Tower, and stood at 
the foot of the stairs, while Forest and Dighton were despatching 
the young victims. We have a knight of a different sort of rep- 
utation in Sir Richard Hutton, Charles I.'s " honest judge," at 



RECIPIENTS OP KNIGHTHOOD. 395 

whose opposition against the levying of ship-money, even the 
king could not feel displeased. Sir Richard deserved his honors ; 
and we may reckon among them the fact, that " when he was a 
barrister at Gray's Inn, he seldom or never took a fee of a cler- 
gyman." 

The old crest of the Huntingdonshire Cromwells was a lion 
rampant, holding a diamond ring in its fore-paw. This crest has 
reference to an individual knighted by Henry VIII. In the thirty- 
second year of that king's reign, Richard Williams, alias Crom- 
well, with five other gentlemen, challenged all or any comers from 
Scotland, Flanders, France, or Spain, who were willing to encoun- 
ter them in the lists. The challenge was duly accepted, and on 
the day of encounter, Richard Cromwell flung two of his adver- 
saries from their horses. Henry loved the sport, and especially 
such feats as this exhibited by Cromwell, whom he summoned to 
his presence. The king said, " You have hitherto been my Dick, 
now be my diamond ;" and taking a diamond ring from his own 
finger, and placing it on that of Cromwell, he bade the latter 
always carry it for his crest. The king, moreover, knighted 
Richard, and what was better, conferred on him Romney Abbey, 
" on condition of his good service, and the payment of £4,663 4s 
2d. held in capite by the tenth part of a knight's fee, paying 
£29 16s." 

It was in the reign of Henry VIII. that for the first time a 
serjeant-at-law received the honor of knighthood. This seems to 
have been considered by the learned body as a corporate honor, by 
which the entire company of sergeants were lifted to a level with 
knights-bachelors, at least. It is doubtless for this reason that 
sergeants-at-law claim to be equal in rank with, and decline to go 
below those said knight's bachelors. 

Of Elizabeth, it is sufficient to name but one sample of her 
knights. She created many, but she never dubbed one who 
more nobly deserved the honor than when she clapped the sword 
on the shoulder of Spielman, the paper-maker, and bade him rise 
a knight. This was done by way of recompense for the im- 
provements he had introduced into his art, at a time when printers 
and paper-makers were considered by Romanists anything but 
angels of li^ht. 



396 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

Hume, referring to the chivalry of James I.'s time, remarks 
that the private soldiers were drawn from a better class of men 
than was the case in Hume's time. They approached, he says, 
nearer to an equality with the rank of officers. It has been an- 
swered that no such rank existed as that from which they are 
chiefly drawn now. This, however, is not the case. There were 
then, as now, doubtless many of the peasant and working classes 
in the army ; but there is not now, as there was then, any encourage- 
ment to men of respectable station to begin the ascent in profes- 
sion of arms at the lowest round of the ladder. 

One of James I.'s knights was the well-known Sir Herbert 
Croft. James knighted him at Theobalds, out of respect to his 
family, and personal merits. Some years subsequently Sir 
Herbert, then above fifty years of age, joined the Church of 
Rome, and retired to Douay, where he dwelt a lay-brother, among 
the English Benedictines. He died among them, after a five 
years' residence, in the year 1622. His eldest son William was 
also knighted, I think, by Charles I. He is an example of those 
who were both knights and clergymen, for after serving as colonel 
in the civil wars, he forsook Catholicism, in which he had been 
brought up by his father, entered the Church of England, and 
like so many other knights who in former times had changed the 
sword for the gown, rose to the dignity of carrying an episcopal 
pastoral staff, and was made Bishop of Hereford in 1661. It was 
a descendant of his who wrote the very inaccurate biography of 
Young, in " Johnson's Lives of the Poets." Wood, in his Athence, 
shows that the first Sir Herbert was a literary knight, who took 
up pen in the service of the communion into which he had en- 
tered. These were; — 1. Letters persuasive to his wife and 
children to take upon them the Catholic religion. 2. Arguments 
to show that the Church, in communion with the See of Rome, is 
the true Church. 3. Reply to the answers of his daughter, Mary 
Croft, which she made to a paper of his sent to her concerning 
the Roman Church." All these pieces appeared in the same year, 
1619, and they seem to have been very harmless weapons in the 
hands of a very amiable knight. 

Among the most worthy of the knights created by James I. was 
Leonard Hoiliday, who served the office of Lord Mayor in 1 605, 



RECIPIENTS OP KNIGHTHOOD. 397 

and was dubbed chevalier by a king who is said never to have 
conferred the honor without being half afraid of the drawn sword 
which was his instrument. Sir Leonard did good service in re- 
turn. In his time Moorfields consisted of nothing but desolate 
land, the stage whereon was enacted much violence and terrible 
pollution. In this savage locality. Sir Leonard effected as won- 
derful a change as Louis Napoleon has done in the Bois de Bou- 
logne ; and even a greater ; for there were more difficulties in 
the knight's way, and his will was less sovereign and potent to 
work mutation. Nevertheless, by perseverance, liberal outlay, 
and hard work of those employed in the manual labor, he trans- 
formed the hideous and almost pathless swamp into a smiling 
garden, wherein the citizens might take the air without fearing 
violence either to body or goods. They blessed king James's 
knight as they disported themselves in the rural district with their 
wives and children. The laborers employed were said to have 
been less lavish of benedictions upon the head of him from whom 
they took their wages. They complained bitterly of the toil, and 
for a long time in London, when any great exertions were neces- 
sary to produce a desired end, promptly, men spoke of the same 
as being mere " Holiday work." 

James I. was not so perfect a knight in presence of a sword as 
he was in presence of a lady. He made more knights than any 
other king, not excepting William IV. ; but he never dubbed one 
without some nervousness at the sight of the weapon with which 
he laid on the honor. Kenelm Digby states that when he was 
knighted by James, the sword, had it not been guided in the King's 
hand by the Duke of Buckingham, would have gone, not upon his 
shoulder, but into his eye. James's aversion from the sight of a 
sword is said to have descended to him from his mother who, a 
short time previous to his birth, was the terrified spectator of the 
murder of Kizzio. The same King used to remark that there 
were two great advantages in wearing armor, namely, that the 
wearer could neither receive nor inflict much injury. Indeed, as 
James sagaciously remarked, the chief inconvenience to be dread- 
ed from armor was in being knocked down in it, and left without 
a squire to lend assistance. In this case the knight stood, or lay, 
in imminent peril of suffocation ; the armor being generally too 



398 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

heavy to admit of a knight rising from the ground without help. 
If he lay on his face his condition was almost hopeless. The 
sentiment of chivalry was, after all, not so foreign to James as is 
popularly supposed. Witness the circumstance when Sully came 
over here as embassador extraordinary, James made the embas- 
sador lower his flag to the pennant of the English vessel sent out 
to receive or escort him. This, however, had been well nigh con- 
strued into an affront. The poets of this time too began to have 
a chivalrous feeling for the hardships of common women. The 
feeling used to be all for princesses and courtly dames, but it was 
now expressed even for shop-wives, behind counters. Thus the 
author of " The Fair Maid of the Inn" says : — 

" A goldsmith keeps his wife 
Wedged into his shop like a mermaid ; nothing of her 
To be seen, that's -woman, but her upper part." 

The ladies too, themselves were growing ambitious, and as 
fanciful as any knight's " dame par amour" of them all. The 
Goldsmith's daughter in " Eastward Ho !" who wants to be made 
a lady, says to her " sweet knight," " Carry me out of the scent of 
Newcastle coal and the hearing of Bow bells !" and d-propos to 
titles, let me add that, in James's time, it was, according to Jon- 
son — 

" a received heresy 



That England bears no Dukes." 

Southey commenting on this passage, said that the title was prob- 
ably thought ominous, so many dukes having lost their heads. 

In the second year of the reign of James L, he made not less 
than three hundred knights ; and on another occasion he is said to 
have made two hundred and thirty-seven in six weeks. In 
France, when the state was in distress, knighthood was often a 
marketable commodity ; but it probably was never more so there, 
than it was in England under the first James. No one was more 
conscious than he, when he had an unworthy person before him ; 
and it sometimes happened that these persons had the same un- 
comfortable consciousness touching themselves. Thus, we are told 
that when " an insigificant person" once held down his head, as 



RECIPIENTS OP KNIGHTHOOD. 399 

the king was about to knight him, James called out, " Hold up 
thy head, man, I have more need to be ashamed than thou." 

The indiscriminate infliction of the order caused great confusion. 
Knights-aldermen in the city claimed precedence of knights-com- 
moners, and violent was the struggle when the question was agi- 
tated. Heralds stood forth and pleaded before " my lords," as 
lawyers do, with reference to the party by which they were re- 
tained. One party considered it absurd that a knight who hap- 
pened to be an alderman should take precedence of one who was 
only a knight. The civic dignitary, it was said, was no more above 
the chivalric, than a rushlight was superior to the sun. Such an 
idea, it was urged, by York against Garter, was an insult to God 
and man. The case was ultimately gained by the chivalric alder- 
men, simply because the knights-commoners did not care to pur- 
sue it, or support their own privileges. York thought that knights- 
commoners, though tradesmen, who had been lord mayors, and yet 
were not now aldermen, ought to take precedence of mere alder- 
man knights. The commoners lost their cause by neglect ; but it 
has been ruled that ex-lord mayors, and provosts of Scotland, shall 
precede all knights, as having been the Sovereign's lieutenants. 

James may be said, altogether, to have shown very little regard 
for the dignity of knights generally. By creating a rank above 
them, he set them a step lower in degree of precedence. This 
monarch is, so to speak, the inventor of the baronet. When 
money was required for the benefit of the Irish province of Ulster, 
a suggestion was made that they who supplied it liberally should 
have the hereditary title of " Sir" and " Baronet." James himself 
was at first a little startled at the proposition, but he soon gave it his 
sanction upon Lord Salisbury observing, " Sire, the money will do 
you good, and the honor will do them none." James thought that 
a fair bargain, and the matter was soon arranged. The knights 
were not pleased, but it was intimated to them, that only two hun- 
dred baronets would be created, and that as the titles became 
extinct, no new hereditary " Sirs" would be nominated. The suc- 
cessors of James did not think themselves bound by the under- 
taking of their predecessor. George HI. the least regarded it, 
for during four or five years of his reign he created baronets at 
the rate of one a-month. 



400 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

A particular annoyance to the poor knights was, that esquires 
could purchase the title, and so leap over them at a bound, or could 
be dubbed knights first, if they preferred to take that rank, by 
the way. But if the knights were aggrieved, much more so were 
their ladies, for the wife of a baronet was allowed precedence of 
all knights' ladies, even of those of the Garter. The baronets 
themselves took precedence of all knights except of those of the 
Garter ; and their elder sons ranked before simple knights, whose 
distinction of " Sir" they were entitled to assume, at the age of 
twenty-one, if they were so minded. Few, however, availed 
themselves of this privilege. 

This matter went so much to the satisfaction of James, that he 
resolved to sell another batch of baronet's titles, and thereupon 
followed his " Baronets of Nova Scotia." All these titles were 
bought of the crown, the pecuniary proceeds being applied to the 
improvement of the outlying province of Nova Scotia. A sneer, 
not altogether rightly directed, has been occasionally flung at these 
purchased hereditary baronetcies. No doubt a title so acquired 
did not carry with it so much honor as one conferred for great and 
glorious service rendered to the country. But there have been 
many titled sneerers whose own dignity stood upon no better basis 
than that their ancestress was a king's concubine, or the founder 
of their house an obsequious slave to monarch or minister. The 
first baronets, whether of Ulster or Nova Scotia, rendered some 
better service than this to their country, by giving their money 
for purposes of certain public good. They were not, indeed, re- 
warded accordingly. They were public benefactors, only on con- 
dition that they should be recompensed with an hereditary title. 
The morality here is not very pure ; the principle is not very 
exalted ; but a smaller outlay of morality and principle has pur- 
chased peerages before now, and the baronets, therefore, have no 
reason to be ashamed of the origin of their order. Least of all 
have those baronets of later creation, men who have made large 
sacrifices and rendered inestimable services to their country. On 
these the rank of baronet conferred no real dignity which they 
did not before possess, but it served as an acknowledgment of their 
worth in the eyes of their fellow-men. I may notice here, that when 
Sir Walter Scott makes record of the gallant action performed 



RECIPIENTS OF KNIGHTHOOD. 401 

at Pinkie by Ralph Sadler, when he rallied the English cavalry 
so effectually as to win a battle almost lost, and seized the royal 
standard of Scotland with his own hand, the biographer adds that 
the rank to which the gallant Ralph was then raised — of knight- 
banneret, " may be called the very pinnacle of chivalry. Knight- 
bannerets could only be created by the king himself or, which was 
very rare, by a person vested with such powers as to represent 
his person. They were dubbed either before or after a battle, in 
which the royal standard was displayed ; and the person so to be 
honored, being brought before the king led by two distinguished 
knights or nobles, presented to the sovereign his pennon, having 
an indenture like a swallow's tail at the extremity. The king 
then cut off the fished extremity, rendering the banner square, 
in shape similar to that of a baron, which, thereafter, the knight- 
banneret might display in every pitched field, in that more noble 
form. If created by the king, the banneret took precedence of 
all other knights, but if by a general, only of knights of the Bath 
and knights-bachelors. Sir Francis Brian, commander of the 
light horsemen, and Sir Ralph Vane, lieutenant of the men-at- 
arms, received this honor with our Sir Ralph Sadler, on the field 
of Pinkie. But he survived his companions, and is said to have 
been the last knight-banneret of England." 

I suppose Washington thought that he had as much right as the 
English Protector to dub knights ; which is not, indeed, to be dis- 
puted. But Washington went further than Cromwell, inasmuch 
as that he instituted an order. This was, what it was said to be, 
trenching on the privilege of a king. It was a military order, 
and was named after the agricultural patriot, who was summoned 
from his plough to guide the destinies of Rome ; for the Romans 
had a very proper idea that nations created their own destinies. 
The order of Cincinnatus being decreed, the insignia of the order 
were sent to Lafayette, then in Paris, where the nobility, who 
could no more spell than Lord Duberly, trusting to their ears 
only, took it for the order of St. Senatus. A little uproar ensued. 
The aristocracy not only sneered at the American Dictator for 
assuming the " hedging" of a king, but they considered also that 
he had encroached upon the privileges of a pope, and, as they 
had searched the calendar and could not find a St Senatus, they 

26 



402 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

at once came to the conclusion that he had canonized some de- 
serving but democratic individual of the city of Boston. 

The commonwealth knights, whether in the naval or land ser- 
vice, had perhaps less of refined gallantry than prevailed among 
the " Cavaliers" par excellence. Thus it was a feat of which old 
chivalry would have been ashamed — that of Admiral Batten, 
when he cannonaded the house in which Queen Henrietta Maria 
was sleeping, at Bridlington, and drove her into the fields. But, 
what do I say touching the gallant refinement on the respective 
sides? — after all, the rudeness of Batten was civility itself com- 
pared with the doings of Goring and his dragoons. On the other 
hand, there was not a man in arms, in either host, who in knightly 
qualifications excelled Hampden — "a supreme governor over all 
his passions and affections, and having thereby a great power over 
those of other men." With regard to Cromwell himself, Madame 
de Sevigne has remarked, that there were some things in which 
the great Turenne resembled him. This seems to me rather a 
compliment to Turenne than to the Protector. The latter, like 
Hampden could conceal, at least, if he could not govern his pas- 
sions. He had the delicacy of knighthood ; and he was not such 
a man as Miles Burket, who, in his prayer on the Sunday after 
the execution of the king, asked the Almighty if he had not smelt 
a sweet savor of blood ? 

The fighting chivalry of Goring, let me add, was nevertheless 
perfect. The courtesies of chivalry were not his ; but in ability 
and bravery he was never surpassed. His dexterity is said to 
have been especially remarkable in sudden emergencies ; and it 
was this dexterity that used to be most praised in the knight of 
olden times. Many other cavaliers were poor soldiers, but ad- 
mirable company. 

The fierce but indomitable spirit of chivalry, on the other hand, 
that spirit which will endure all anguish without relinquishing an 
iota of principle, or yielding an inch of ground in the face of 
overwhelming numbers, was conspicuous in other men besides the 
martial followers of Cromwell. I will only instance the case of 
Prynne, who, under the merciless scourge, calmly preached against 
tyranny; and with his neck in the pillory, boldly wagged his 
tongue against cruelty and persecution. " Freeborn John" was 



RECIPIENTS OF KNIGHTHOOD. 403 

gagged for his audacity, but wben he was thus rendered speech- 
less, he stamped incessantly with his unshackled feet, to express 
that he was invincible and unconvinced still. If this was not as 
great courage as ever was shown by knight, I know not what to 
call it. 

Against the courage of Cromwell, Dugdale and Roger Manby 
say more than can ever be alleged against Prynne — namely, that 
his heart failed him once in his life. It is said, that when he was 
captain of a troop of horse in Essex's regiment, at Edgehill, " he 
absented himself from the battle, and observing, from the top of a 
neighboring steeple the disorder that the right wing sustained from 
Prince Rupert, he was so terrified, that slipping down in haste by 
a bell-rope, he took horse, and ran away with his troop, for which 
cowardice he had been cashiered, had it not been for the powerful 
mediation of his friends." This passage shows that the legendary 
style of the chivalrous romance still was followed as an example 
by historians. Indeed romance itself claimed Oliver for a hero, 
as it had done with many a knight before him. It was gravely 
told of him that, before the battle of Worcester, he went into a 
wood, like any Sir Tristram, where he met a solemn old man with 
a roll of parchment in his hand. Oliver read the roll — a com- 
pact between him and the Prince of Darkness, and was heard to 
say, " This is only for seven years ; I was to have had one for 
one-and-twenty." "Then," says the Chronicler, "he stood out 
for fourteen ; but the other replied, that if he would not take it 
on those terms, there were others who would. So he took the 
parchment and died that day seven years." This is history after 
the model of the Seven Champions. 

The observance of knightly colors was kept up in the contest 
between commonwealth men and the crown. Those of Essex 
were deep yellow ; and so acute were the jealousies of war, that 
they who wore any other were accounted as disaffected to the good 
cause. 

I have remarked before, that Siri puts blame upon the Scot- 
tish men-at-arms, whose alleged mercenary conduct was said to 
have been the seed of a heavy crop of evil. The Scots seem to 
have been unpopular on all sides. Before the catastrophe, which 
ended king and kingdom, the French embassador, then in the 



404 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

north, was escorted to some point by a troop of Scots horse. On 
leaving them, he drew out half-a-crown piece, and asked them how 
many pence it contained. "Thirty," was the ready-reckoned 
answer of an arithmetical carabinier. " Exactly so !" replied the 
envoy, flinging the piece among them with as much contempt as the 
Prince of Orange felt respect, when he threw his cross among the 
Dutch troops at Waterloo. " Exactly so ! take it. It was the 
price for which Judas betrayed his master." 

If the saints were unsainted in the time of the commonwealth, 
they found some compensation at the hands of Mr. Penry, the 
author of Martin Mar-Prelate, who chose to knight the most dis- 
tinguished — and this not only did he do to the male, but to the 
female saints. The facetious Penry, accordingly, spoke of Sir 
Paul, Sir Peter, and Sir Martin, and also of Sir Margaret and 
Sir Mary. 

Passing on to later times, those of James II., I may observe 
that Poor Nat Lee, when mad, said of a celebrated knight of this 
time, Sir Roger Lestrange, that the difference between the two 
was that one was Strange Lee, the other Lestrange. " You poor 
in purse," said Lee, " as I am poor in brains." Sir Eoger was 
certainly less richly endowed mentally than the poet, but he had 
one quality which a knight of old was bound to have, above most 
men who were his contemporaries — namely, intense admiration 
for the ladies. This gallantry he carried so far that when he was 
licenser of books, it is said that he would readily wink at unli- 
censed volumes, if the printer's wife would only smile at him. 

Though not exactly germane to the immediate subject of Sir 
Roger, I will notice here that it was the custom for children, as 
as late as the reign of James II., on first meeting their parents in 
the morning, to kneel at their feet and ask a blessing. This was 
an observance seldom omitted in the early days of chivalry by 
knights who encountered a priest. We often hear praises of this 
filial reverence paid by errant knights to the spiritual fathers whom 
they encountered in their wanderings. 

Another social custom connected with chivalry was still observed 
during this, and even during the reign of William III. It is 
noticed by Dryden, in the dedication to his " Love Triumphant," 
in the following words: — "It is the usual practice of our decayed 



RECIPIENTS OF KNIGHTHOOD. 405 

gentry to look about them for some illustrious family, and then fix 
their young darling where he may be both well-educated and sup- 
ported." The knightly courage and the education were not always 
of the highest quality, if we might put implicit faith in the passage 
in Congreve's Old Bachelor, wherein it is said, " the habit of a 
soldier now-a-days as often cloaks cowardice, as a black coat does 
atheism." But the stage is not to be taken as fairly holding the 
mirror up to nature ; and for my part, I do not credit the asser- 
tion of that stage-knight, Sir Harry "Wildair, that in England, 
" honesty went out with the slashed doublets, and love with the 
close-bodied gown." Nor do I altogether credit what is said of 
Queen Anne's time, in the Fair Quaker of Deal, that " our sea- 
chaplains, generally speaking, are as drunk as our sea-captains." 

"William III. knighted many a man who did not merit the honor, 
but he was guilty of no such mistake when he laid the sword of 
chivalry on the shoulders of honest Thomas Abney, citizen of 
London. Abney was one of those happy architects who build up 
their own fortunes, and upon a basis of rectitude and common- 
sense. In course of time, he achieved that greatness which is 
now of so stupendous an aspect in the eyes of the Parisians ; in 
other words, he became Lord Mayor of London. The religious 
spirit of chivalry beat within the breast that was covered with 
broadcloth, and Sir Thomas Abney humbled himself on the day 
on which he was exalted*. He had been " brought up" a dissenter, 
but he certainly was not one when he became sovereign of the 
city in the year 1700. He was none the less a Christian, and it 
is an exemplary and an agreeable trait that we have of him, as 
illustrated in his conduct on the day of his inauguration. The 
evening banquet was still in progress, when he silently withdrew 
from the glittering scene, hurried home, read evening prayers to 
such of his household as were there assembled on the festive day, 
and then calmly returned and resumed his place among the joy- 
ous company. 

This knight's hospitality was of the same sterling quality. Who 
forgets that to him Dr. Watts (that amiable intolerant !) was in- 
debted during thirty years for a home ? The Abney family had 
a respect for the author of " the Sluggard," which never slept. It 
almost reached idolatry. I have said thirty years, but in truth, 



406 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

Dr. Watts was at home, at the hearth of Sir Thomas, during no 
briefer a period than six-and-thirty years. The valetudinarian 
poet, the severity of whose early studies had compelled him to bid 
an eternal vale to the goddess of health, was welcomed by the 
knight, with an honest warmth born of respect for the worth and 
genius of a kind-hearted man who " scattered damnation" in gentle 
rhymes, and yet who would not have hurt a worm. In the little 
paradise where he was as much at ease as his precarious health 
would allow, it is astonishing with what vigor of spirit and weak- 
ness of phrase the good-intentioned versifier thrust millions from 
the gates of a greater paradise. Such at least was my own early 
impression of the rhymes of the knight's guest. They inspired 
much fear and little love : and if I can see now that such was not 
the author's design, and that he only used menace to secure obedience, 
that thereby affection might follow, I still am unable to come to any 
other conclusion, than that the method adopted is open to censure. 

He sat beneath the knightly roof, without a want unsupplied, 
with every desire anticipated ; exempted from having to sustain 
an active share of the warfare in the great battle of life, he was 
beset by few, perhaps by no temptations ; and free from every 
care, he had every hour of the day wherein to walk with God. 
His defect consisted in forgetting that other men, and the children 
of men, had not his advantage, and while, rightly enough, he ac- 
counted their virtue as nothing, he had no bowels of compassion 
for their human failings. It is well to erect a high standard, but 
it is not less so to console rather than condemn those who fall short 
of it. u Excelsior" is a good advice, on a glorious banner, but 
they who are luxuriously carried on beneath its folds should not 
be hasty to condemn those who faint by the way, fall back, and 
await the mercy of God, whereby to attain the high prize which 
they had for their chief object. I should like to know if Sir 
Thomas ever disputed the conclusions adopted by his guest. 

This mention of the metropolitan knight and the poet who sat 
at his hearth, reminds me of a patron and guest of another quality, 
who were once well known in the neighborhood of Metz ; — " Metz 
sans Lorraine," as the proud inhabitants speak of a free locality 
which was surrounded by, but was never in Lorraine. 

The patron was an old chevalier de St. Louis, with a small cross 



RECIPIENTS OP KNIGHTHOOD. 407 

and large " ailes de pigeon." The guest was the parish priest, 
who resided under his roof, and was the " friend of the house." 
The parish was a poor one, but it had spirit enough to raise a sub- 
scription in order to supply the altar with a new ciborium — the 
vessel which holds the " body of the Lord." With the modest 
sum in hand, the Knight of St. Louis, accompanied by the priest, 
repaired to Metz, to make the necessary purchase. The orthodox 
goldsmith placed two vessels before them. One was somewhat 
small, but suitable to the funds at the knight's disposal ; the other 
was large, splendidly chased, and highly coveted by the priest. 

" Here is a pretty article," said the chevalier, pointing to the 
simpler of the two vessels : "But here is a more worthy," inter- 
rupted the priest. " It corresponds with the sum at our disposal," 
remarked the former. " I am sure it does not correspond with 
your love for Him for whom the sum was raised," was the rejoinder. 
" I have no authority to exceed the amount named," whispered the 
cautious chevalier. " But you have wherewith of your own to 
supply the deficiency," murmured the priest. The perplexed 
knight began to feel himself a dissenter from the church, and after 
a moment's thought, and looking at the smaller as well as the sim- 
pler of the two vessels, he exclaimed — " it is large enough for the 
purpose, and will do honor to the church." " The larger would 
be more to the purpose, and would do more honor to the Head of 
the Church," was the steady clerical comment which followed. 
" Do you mean to say that it is not large enough ?" asked the 
treasurer. " Certainly, since there is a larger, which we may 
have, if you will only be generous." "Mais!" remonstrated the 
knight, in a burst of profane impatience, and pointing to the smaller 
ciborium, " Cela contiendroit le diable !" " Ah, Monsieur le Chev- 
alier," said the priest, by no means shocked at the idiomatic phrase. 
" Le Bon Dieu est plus grand que le diable !" This stroke won 
the day, and the goldsmith was the most delighted of the three, at 
this conclusion to a knotty argument. 

George I. was not of a sufficiently generous mind to allow of 
his distributing honors very profusely. The individuals, however, 
"who were eminently useful to him were often rewarded by being 
appointed to enjoy the emoluments, if not exercise the duties of 
several offices, each in his own person. At a period when this 



408 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

was being done in England, the exact reverse was being accom- 
plished in Spain. Thus we read in the London Gazette of March 
29 to April 1, 1718, under the head of Madrid, March 21, the fol- 
lowing details, which might be put to very excellent profit in 
England in these more modern times : — 

" The King having resolved that no person shall enjoy more 
than one office in his service, notice has been given to the Duke 
d'Arco, who is Master of the Horse, and Gentleman of the Bed- 
chamber; the Marquis de Montelegre, Lord Chamberlain and 
Captain of the Guard of Halberdiers ; the Marquis de St. Juan, 
Steward of the Household, and Master of the Horse to the Queen ; 
and one of the Council of the Harinda, the Marquis de Bedmar, 
the Minister of War, and President of the Council ; and several 
others who are in the like case, to choose which of their employ- 
ments they will keep. To which they have all replied that they 
will make no claim, but will be determined by what his Majesty 
shall think fit to appoint. The like orders are given in the army, 
where they who receive pay as General Officers, and have Colo- 
nels' commissions besides, are obliged to part with their regi- 
ments." 

This regulation seriously disturbed the revenue of many a Span- 
ish knight ; but it was a wise and salutary regulation, nevertheless. 
At the very period of its being established, Venice was selling her 
titles of knighthood and nobility. In the same Gazette from which 
the above details are extracted, I find it noticed, under the head 
of " Venice, March 25," that " Signor David, and Paul Spinelli, 
two Geneva gentlemen, were, upon their petition, admitted this 
week by the Grand Council, into the Order of the Nobility of this 
Republic, having purchased that honor for a hundred thousand 
ducats." It was a large price for so small a privilege. 

I have treated of knighthood under George II., sufficiently at 
length, when speaking of that king himself; and I will add only 
one trait of Ins successor. 

It was not often that George HI. was facetious, but tradition 
has attributed to him a compound pun, when he was urged by his 
minister to confer knighthood upon Judge Day, on the return of 
the latter from India. " Pooh ! pooh !" remonstrated the king, 
" how can I turn a Day into night ?" On the ministerial applica- 



RECIPIENTS OF KNIGHTHOOD. 409 

tion being renewed, the king asked, if Mr. Day was married, and 
an affirmative reply being given, George III. immediately rejoined, 
u Then let him come to the next drawing-room, and I will perform 
a couple of miracles ; I will not only turn Day into Knight, but I 
will make Lady-Day at Christmas." 

There was a saying of George III. which, put into practice, was 
as beneficial as many of the victories gained by more chivalrous 
monarchs. " The ground, like man, was never intended to be 
idle. If it does not produce something useful it will be overrun 
with weeds." 

Among the men whom James I. knighted, was one who had 
passed through the career of a page, and notice of whom I have 
reserved, that I might contrast his career with that of a contem- 
porary and well-known squire. 



410 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 



RICHARD CARR, PAGE ; AND GUY FAUX, 
ESQUIRE. 

Op all the adventurers of the seventeenth century, I do not 
know any who so well illustrate the objects I have in view, as the 
two above-named gentlemen. The first commenced life as a page ; 
the second was an esquire by condition, and a man-at-arms. 
Master Faux, for attempting murder, suffered death ; and Richard 
Carr, although he was convicted of murder, was suffered to live 
on, and was not even degraded from knighthood. 

When the Sixth James of Scotland reigned, a poor king in a 
poor country, there was among his retinue a graceful boy — a scion 
of the ancient house of Fernyhurst, poor in purse, and proud in 
name. At the court of the extravagant yet needy Scottish king, 
there was but scant living even for a saucy page ; and Richard 
Carr of Fernyhurst turned his back on Mid Lothian, and in 
foreign travel forgot his northern home. 

James, in his turn, directed his face toward the English border ; 
and subsequently, in the vanities of Whitehall, the hunting at 
Theobald's, the vicious pleasure of Greenwich, and the royster- 
ings at Royston, he forgot the graceful lad who had ministered to 
him at Holyrood, St. Andrews, and Dunbar. 

When this James I. of England had grown nearly tired of his 
old favorite and minister, Salisbury, for want of better employ- 
ment he ordered a tilting match, and the order was obeyed with 
alacrity. In this match Lord Hay resolved to introduce to the 
King's notice a youth who enjoyed his lordship's especial patron- 
age. Accordingly, when the monarch was seated in his tribune, 
and the brazen throats of the trumpets had bidden the rough 
sport to begin, the young squire of Lord Hay, a handsome youth 



RICHARD CARR, PAGE, AND GUY FAUX, ESQUIRE. 411 

of twenty, straight of limb, fair of favor, strong-shouldered, 
smooth-faced, and with a modesty that enhanced his beauty, rode 
up on a fiery steed, to lay his master's shield and lance at the feet 
of the monarch. The action of the apprentice warrior was so 
full of grace, his steed so full of fire, and both so eminently beauti- 
ful, that James was lost in admiration. But suddenly, as the 
youth bent forward to present his master's device, his spur pricked 
the flank of his charger, and the latter, with a bound and a plunge, 
threw his rider out of the saddle, and flung young Carr of Ferny- 
hurst, at the feet of his ex-master, the King. The latter recog- 
nised his old page, and made amends for the broken leg got in the 
fall, by nursing the lad, and making him Viscount Rochester, as 
soon as he was well. James created him knight of the Garter, 
and taught him grammar. Rochester gave lessons to the King in 
foreign history. The ill-favored King*Walked about the court 
with his arms round the neck of the well-favored knight. He was 
for ever either gazing at him or kissing him. ; trussing his points, 
settling his curls, or smoothing his hose. When Rochester was 
out of the King's sight James was mindful of him, and confis- 
cated the estates of honest men in order to enrich his own new 
favorite. He took Sherborne from the widow and children of 
Raleigh, with the cold-blooded remark to the kneeling lady, " I 
maun have it for Carr !" 

Rochester was a knight who ruled the King, but there was 
another knight who ruled Rochester. This was the well-born, 
hot-headed, able and vicious Sir Thomas Overbury. Overbury 
polished and polluted the mind of Rochester ; read all documents 
which passed through the hands of the latter, preparatory to 
reaching those of the King, and not only penned Rochester's 
own despatches, but composed his love-letters for him. How 
pointedly Sir Thomas could write may be seen in his " Charac- 
ters ;" and as a poet, the knight was of no indifferent reputation 
in his day. 

Rochester, Sir Thomas, and the King, were at the very height 
of their too-warm friendship, when James gave Frances Howard, 
the daughter of the Earl of Suffolk, in marriage to young Deve- 
reux, Earl of Essex. The bride was just in her teens. The 
bridegroom was a day older. The Bishop of Bath and Wells 



412 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

blessed them in the presence of the King, and Ben Jonson and 
Inigo Jones constructed a masque in honor of the occasion. 
When the curtain fell, bride and bridegroom went their separate 
ways ; the first to her mother ; the second to school. Four years 
elapsed ere they again met ; and then Frances, who had been ill- 
trained by her mother, seduced by Prince Henry, and wooed by 
Rochester, looked upon Essex with infinite scorn. Essex turned 
from her with disgust. 

Rochester then resolved to marry Frances, and Frances em- 
ployed the poisoner of Paternoster-row, Mrs. Turner, and a certain 
Dr. Forman, to prepare philters that should make more ardent the 
flame of the lover, and excite increased aversion in the breast of 
the husband. Overbury, with intense energy, opposed the idea 
of the guilty pair, that a divorce from Essex was likely to be pro- 
cured. He even spoke*of the infamy of the lady, to her lover. 
Frances, thereupon, offered a thousand pounds to a needy knight, 
Sir John Ward, to slay Overbury in a duel. Sir John declined 
the offer. A more successful method was adopted. Sir Thomas 
Overbury was appointed embassador to Russia, and on his refusing 
to accept the sentence of banishment, he was clapped into the 
tower as guilty of contempt toward the king. In that prison, the 
literary knight was duly despatched by slow poison. The guilt 
was brought home less to Rochester than to Frances, but 
the King himself appears to have been very well content at the 
issue. 

James united with Rochester and the lady to procure a divorce 
between the latter and Essex. The King was bribed by a sum 
of £25,000. Essex himself did not appear. Every ecclesiastical 
judge was recompensed who pronounced for the divorce — carried 
by seven against five, and even the son of one of them was 
knighted. This was the heir of Dr. Bilson, Bishop of Winches- 
ter, and he was ever afterward known by the name of Sir Nul- 
lity Bilson. 

Sir Nullity danced at the wedding of the famous or infamous 
pair ; and never was wedding more splendid. King, peers, and 
illustrious commoners graced it with their presence. The diocesan 
of Bath and Wells pronounced the benediction. The Dean of St. 
Paul's wrote for the occasion an epi thalamic eclogue. The Dean 



RICHARD CARR, PAGE, AND GUY FAUX, ESQUIRE. 413 

of Westminster supplied the sermon. The great Bacon composed, 
in honor of the event, the " Masque of Flowers ;" and the City 
made itself bankrupt by the extravagant splendor of its fetes. One 
gentleman horsed the bride's carriage, a bishop's lady made the 
bride's cake, and one humorous sycophant offered the married 
pair the equivocal gift of a gold warming-pan. 

The King, not to be behindhand in distributing honors, con- 
ferred one which cost him nothing. He created Rochester Earl 
of Somerset. 

Two years after this joyous wedding, the gentleman who had 
made a present to the bride, of four horses to draw her in a gilded 
chariot to the nuptial altar, had become a knight and secretary of 
state. Sir Richard (or, as some call him, Sir Robert) Winwood 
was a worshipper of the now rising favorite, Villiers ; and none 
knew better than this newly-made knight that the King was utterly 
weary of his old favorite, Somerset. 

Winwood waited on the King and informed him that a garrulous 
young apothecary at Flushing, who had studied the use of drugs 
under Dr. Franklin of London, was making that melancholy town 
quite lively, by his stories of the abuses of drugs, and the method 
in which they had been employed by Lord and Lady Somerset, 
Mrs. Turner (a pretty woman, who invented yellow starched ruffs) 
and their accomplices, in bringing about the death of Overbury. 
The food conveyed to the latter was poisoned by Frances and her 
lover, outside the tower, and was administered to the imprisoned 
knight by officials within the walls, who were bribed for the purpose. 

There is inextricable confusion in the details of the extraordi- 
nary trial which ensued. It is impossible to read them without the 
conviction that some one higher in rank than the Somersets was 
interested, if not actually concerned, in the death of Overbury. 
The smaller personages were hanged, and Mrs. Turner put yellow 
ruffs out of fashion by wearing them at the gallows. 

Lady Somerset pleaded guilty, evidently under the influence of 
a promise of pardon, if she did so, and of fear lest Bacon's already 
prepared speech, had she pleaded not guilty, might send her to an 
ignominious death. She was confined in the Tower, and she im- 
plored with frantic energy, that she might not be shut up in the 
room which had been occupied by Overbury. 



414 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

Somerset appeared before his judges in a solemn suit, and wear- 
ing the insignia of the Garter. He pleaded not guilty, but despite 
insufficiency of legal evidence he was convicted, and formally con- 
demned to be hanged, like any common malefactor. But the ex- 
page won his life by his taciturnity. Had he, in his defence, or 
afterward, revealed anything that could have displeased or dis- 
turbed the King, his life would have paid the forfeit. As it was, 
the King at once ordered that the Earl's heraldic arms as knight 
of the Garter should not be taken down. For the short period of 
the imprisonment of the guilty pair, both guilty of many crimes, 
although in the matter of Overbury there is some doubt as to the 
extent of the Earl's complicity, they separately enjoyed the " Lib- 
erty of the Tower." The fallen favorite was wont to pace the 
melancholy ramparts with the George and collar round his neck 
and the Garter of knighthood below his knee. He was often seen 
in grave converse with the Earl of Northumberland. Sometimes, 
the guilty wife of Somerset, impelled by curiosity or affection, 
would venture to gaze at him for a minute or two from her lattice, 
and then, if the Earl saw her, he would turn, gravely salute her, 
and straightway pass on in silence. 

When liberated from the Tower, the knight of the Garter, con- 
victed of murder, and his wife, confessedly guilty, went forth to- 
gether under protection of a royal pardon. Down to the time 
of the death of Lady Somerset, in 1632, the wretched pair are 
said never to have opened their lips but to express, each hatred 
and execration of the other. The earl lived on till 1645 — long 
enough to see the first husband of his wife carry his banner tri- 
umphantly against the son of James, at Edgehill. The two hus- 
bands of one wife died within a few months of each other. 

Such was the career of one who began life as a page. Let us 
contrast therewith the early career of one whose name is still more 
familiar to the general reader. 

Toward the middle of the sixteenth century there was estab- 
lished at York a respectable and influential Protestant family of 
the name of Fawkes. Some of the members were in the legal 
profession, others were merchants. One was registrar and advo- 
cate of the Consistory Court of the cathedral church of York. 
Another was notary and proctor. A third is spoken of as a mer- 



RICHARD CARR, PAGE, AND GUY FAUX, ESQUIRE. 415 

chant-stapler. All were well to-do ; but not one of them dreamed 
that the name of Fawkes was to be in the least degree famous. 

The Christian name of the elclesiastical lawyer was Edward. 
He was the third son of William and Ellen Fawkes, and was the 
favorite child of his mother. She bequeathed trinkets, small sums, 
and odd bits of furniture to her other children, but to Edward she 
left her wedding suit, and the residue of her estate. Edward 
Fawkes was married when his mother made her will. While the 
document was preparing, his wife Edith held in her arms an infant 
boy. To this boy she left her " best whistle, and one old angel of 
gold." 

The will itself is a curious document. It is devotional, accord- 
ing to the good custom of the days in which it was made. The 
worthy old testator made some singular bequests ; to her son 
Thomas, amid a miscellaneous lot, she specifies, " my second petti- 
coat, my worsted gowne, gardit with velvet, and a damask kirtle." 
The " best kirtle and best petticoat" are bequeathed to her daughter- 
in-law Edith Fawkes. Among the legatees is a certain John 
(who surely must have been a Joan) Sheerecrofte, to whom, says 
Mistress Fawkes, " I leave my petticoat fringed about, my woorse 
grogram kirtle, one of my lynn smockes, and a damask upper 
bodie." The sex, however, of the legatee is not to be doubted, for 
another gentleman in Mrs. Fawkes's will comes in for one of her 
bonnets ! 

The amount of linen bequeathed, speaks well for the lady's 
housewifery ; while the hats, kirtles, and rings, lead us to fear that 
the wife of Master Edward Fawkes must have occasionally startled 
her husband with the amount of little accounts presented to him 
by importunate dressmakers, milliners, and jewellers. Such, how- 
ever, was the will of a lady of York three centuries ago, and the 
child in arms who was to have the silver whistle and a gold angel 
was none other than our old acquaintance, known to us as Guy 
Faux. 

Guy was christened on the sixteenth of April, 1570, in the still 
existing church of St. Michael le Belfry ; and when the gossips 
and sponsors met round the hospitable table of the paternal lawyer 
to celebrate the christening of his son, the health of Master Guy 
followed hard upon that of her gracious highness the queen. 



416 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

Master Guy had the misfortune to lose his father in his ninth 
year. " He left me but small living," said Guy, many years after- 
ward, " and I spent it." After^his sire's decease, Guy was for 
some years a pupil at the free foundation grammar-school in " the 
Horse Fayre," adjacent to York. There he accomplished his hu- 
manities under the Reverend Edward Pulleyne. Among his 
schoolfellows were Bishop Morton, subsequently Bishop of Dur- 
ham, and a quiet little boy, named Cheke, who came to be a 
knight and baronet, and who, very probably went, in after-days, to 
see his old comrade in the hands of the hangman. 

Some seventeen miles from York stands the pleasant town of 
Knaresborough, and not far from Knaresborough is the village of 
Scotten. "When Guy was yet a boy, there lived in this village a 
very gay, seductive wooer, named Dennis Baynbridge. This 
wooer was wont to visit the widowed Edith, and the result of his 
visits was that the widowed Edith rather hastily put away her 
weeds, assumed a bridal attire, married the irresistible Dennis, 
and, with her two daughters, Anne and Elizabeth, and her only 
son Guy, accompanied her new husband to his residence at 
Scotten. 

Baynbridge was a Roman Catholic, as also were the Pullens, 
Percies, Winters, Wrights, and others who lived in Scotten or its 
neighborhood, and whose names figure in the story of the Gun- 
powder Plot. 

At Scotten, then, and probably soon after his mother's marriage, 
in 1582, Guy, it may be safely said, left the faith in which he had 
been baptized, for that of the Romish Church. Had he declined 
to adopt the creed of his step-sire, he perhaps would have been 
allowed but few opportunities of angling in the Nidd, rabbiting by 
Bilton Banks, nutting in Goldsborough Wood, or of passing idle 
holydays on Grimbald Craig. 

On the wedding-day of Edith Fawkes and Dennis Baynbridge, 
the paternal uncle of Guy made his will. He exhibited his sense 
of the step taken by the lady, by omitting her name from the will, 
and by bequeathing the bulk of his property to the two sisters of 
Guy. To Guy himself, Uncle Thomas left only " a gold ring," 
and a " bed and one pair of sheets, with the appurtenances." 

When Guy became of age, he found himself in possession of his 



RICHARD CARR, PAGE, AND GUY FAUX, ESQUIRE. 417 

patrimony — some land and a farm-house. The latter, with two 
or three acres of land, he let to a tailor, named Lumley, for the 
term of twenty-one years, at the annual rent of forty-two shillings. 
The remainder he sold at once for a trifle less than thirty pounds. 
Shortly after, he made over to a purchaser all that was left of his 
property. He bethought himself for a while as to what course he 
should take, and finally he chose the profession of arms, and went 
out to Spain, to break crowns and to w r in spurs. 

In Spain, he fell into evil company and evil manners. He saw 
enough of hard fighting, and indulged, more than enough, in hard 
drinking. He was wild, almost savage of temper, and he never 
rose to a command which gave him any chance of gaining admis- 
sion on the roll of chivalry. There was a knight, however, named 
Catesby, who was a comrade of Guy, and the latter clung to him 
as a means whereby to become as great as that to which he clung. 

Guy bore himself gallantly in Spain ; and, subsequently, in 
Flanders, he fought with such distinguished valor, that when 
Catesby and his associates in England were considering where 
they might find the particular champion whom they needed for 
their particular purpose in the Gunpowder Plot, the thought of 
the reckless soldier flashed across the mind of Catesby, and Guy 
was at once looked after as the " very properest man" for a very 
improper service. 

The messenger who was despatched to Flanders to sound Guy, 
found the latter eager to undertake the perilous mission of destroy- 
ing king and parliament, and thereby helping Rome to lord it again 
in England. The English soldier in Flanders came over to Lon- 
don, put up at an inn, which occupied a site not very distant from 
that of the once well-known " Angel" in St. Clement's Danes, and 
made a gay figure in the open Strand, till he was prepared to con- 
summate a work w T hich he thought would help himself to greatness. 

Into the matter of the plot I will not enter. It must be ob- 
served, however, that knight never went more coolly to look death 
in the face than Guy went to blow up the Protestant king and the 
parliament. At the same time it must be added, that Guy had 
not the slightest intention of hoisting himself with his own petard. 
He ran a very great risk, it is true, and he did it fearlessly ; but 
the fact that both a carriage and a boat were in waiting to facili- 

27 



418 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

tate his escape, shows that self-sacrifice was not the object of the 
son of the York proctor. His great ambition was to rank among 
knights and nobles. He took but an ill-method to arrive at such 
an object ; but his reverence for nobility was seen even when he 
was very near to his violent end. If he was ever a hero, it was 
when certain death by process of law was before him. But even 
then it was his boast and solace, that throughout the affair there 
was not a man employed, even to handle a spade, in furtherance 
of the end in view, who was not a gentleman. Guy died under 
the perfect conviction that he had done nothing derogatory to his 
quality ! 

Considering how dramatic are the respective stories of the page 
and squire, briefly noticed above, it is remarkable that so little use 
has been made of them by dramatists. Savage is the only one 
who has dramatized the story of the two knights, Somerset and 
Overbury. In this tragedy bearing the latter knight's name, and 
produced at the Haymarket, in June, 1723, he himself played the 
hero, Sir Thomas. His attempt to be an actor, and thus gain an 
honest livelihood by his industry, "Was the only act of his life of 
which Savage was ever ashamed. In this piece the only guilty 
persons are the countess and her uncle, the Earl of Northampton. 
This is in accordance with the once-prevailing idea that North- 
ampton planned the murder of Sir Thomas, in his residence, which 
occupied the site of the present Northumberland house. The play 
was not successful, and the same may be said of it when revived, 
with alterations, at Covent Garden, in 1777. Sheridan, the actor, 
furnished the prologue. In this production he expressed his be- 
lief that the public generally felt little interest in the fate of knights 
and kings. The reason he assigns is hardly logical. 

" Too great for pity, they inspire respect, 
Their deeds astonish rather than affect. 
Proving how rare the heart that we can move, 
Which reason tells us wa can never prove." 

Guy Faux, who, when in Spain, was the 'squire of the higher- 
born Catesby, has inspired but few dramatic writers. I only know 
of two. In Mrs. Crouch's memoirs, notice is made of an after- 
piece, brought out on the 5th of November, 1793, at the Hay- 



RICHARD CARR, PAGE, AND GUY FAUX, ESQUIRE. 419 

market. A far more creditable attempt to dramatize the story of 
Guy Fawkes was made with great success at the Coburg (Victoria) 
theatre, in September, 1822. This piece still keeps possession of 
the minor stage, and deservedly ; but it has never been played 
with such effect as by its first " cast." 0. Smith was the Guy, 
and since he had played the famous Obi, so well as to cause 
Charles Kemble's impersonation at the Haymarket to be forgotten, 
he had never been fitted with a character which suited him so ad- 
mirably. It was one of the most truthful personations which the 
stage had ever seen. Indeed the piece was played by such a troop 
of actors as can not now be found in theatres of more pretensions 
than the transpontine houses. The chivalric Huntley, very like 
the chivalric Leigh Murray, in more respects than one, enacted 
Tresham with a rare ability, and judicious Chapman played Catesby 
with a good taste, which is not to be found now in the same local- 
ity. Dashing Stanley was the Monteagle, and graceful Howell 
the Percy, Beverly and Sloman gave rough portraits of the king 
and the facetious knight, Sir Tristam Collyivolble — coarse but 
effective. Smith, however, was* the soul of the piece, and Mr. 
Fawkes, of Farnley, might have witnessed the representation, 
and have been proud of his descent from the dignified hero that 
O. Smith made of his ancestor. 

I have given samples of knights of various qualities, but I have 
yet to mention the scholar and poet knights. There are many 
personages who would serve to illustrate the knight so qualified, 
but I know of none so suitable as Ulrich Von Hutten. 



420 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 



ULRICH VON HUTTEN. 

" Jacta est alea." — Ulrich's Device. 

Ulrich von Hutten was born on the 21st of April, 1488, 
in the castle of Stackelberg, near Fulda, in Franconia. He was 
of a noble family — all the men of which were brave, and all the 
women virtuous. He had three brothers and two sisters. His 
tender mother loved him the most, because he was the weakest of 
her offspring. His father loved him the least for the same reason. 
For a like cause, however, both parents agreed that a spiritual 
education best accorded with the frame of Ulrich. The latter, at 
eleven years old, was accordingly 'sent to learn his humanities in 
the abbey school at Fulda. 

His progress in all knowledge, religious and secular, made him 
the delight of the stern abbot and of his parents. Every effort 
possible was resorted to, to induce him to devote himself for ever 
to the life of the cloister. In his zealous opposition to this he was 
ably seconded by a strong-handed and high-minded knight, a friend 
of his father's named Eitelwolf von Stein. This opposition so 
far succeeded, that in 1504, when Ulrich was sixteen years of age 
he fled from the cloister-academy of Fulda, and betook himself 
to the noted high-school at Erfurt. 

Among his dearest fellow Alumni here were E-ubianus and 
Hoff, both of whom subsequently achieved great renown. In the 
Augustine convent, near the school, there was residing a poor 
young monk, who also subsequently became somewhat famous. 
Nobody, however, took much account of him just then, and few 
even cared to know his name — Martin Luther. The plague 
breaking out at Erfurt, Rubianus was accompanied by Ulrich to 
Cologne, there to pursue their studies. The heart and purse of 
Ulrich's father were closed against the son, because of his flight 



ULRICH VON HUTTEN. 421 

from Fulda ; but his kinsman Eitelwolf, provided for the necessi- 
ties of the rather imprudent young scholar. 

The sages who trained the young idea at Cologne were of the 
old high and dry quality — hating progress and laboriously learned 
in trifles. At the head of them were Hogstraten and Ortuin. 
Ulrich learned enough of their manner to be able to crush them 
afterward with ridicule, by imitating their style, and reproducing 
their gigantic nonsense, in the famous "Epistoke Obscurorum 
Virorum." In the meantime he knit close friendship with Sebas- 
tian Brandt, and CEcolampadius — both young men of progress. 
The latter was expelled from Cologne for being so, but the Uni- 
versity of Frankfort on the Oder offered him an asylum. Thither 
Ulrich repaired also, to be near his friend, and to sharpen his 
weapons for the coming struggle between light and darkness — 
Germany against Rome, and the German language against the 
Latin. 

At Frankfort he won golden opinions from all sorts of people. 
The Elector, Joachim of Brandenburg ; his brother, the priestly 
Margrave Albert ; and Bishop Dietrich von Beilow were proud 
of the youth who did honor to the university. He here first be- 
came a poet, and took the brothers Von Osthen for his friends. 
He labored earnestly, and acquired much glory ; but he was a 
very free liver to boot, though he was by no means particularly 
so, for the times in which he lived. His excesses, however, 
brought on a dangerous disease, which, it is sometimes supposed, 
had not hitherto been known in Europe. Be this as it may, he 
was never wholly free from the malady as long as he lived, nor 
ever thought that it much mattered whether he suffered or not. 

He was still ill when he took up for a season the life of a wan- 
dering scholar. He endured all its miserable vicissitudes, suffered 
famine and shipwreck, and was glad at last to find a haven, as a 
poor student, in the Pomeranian University of Griefswalde. The 
Professor Lotz and his father the Burgomaster, were glad to 
patronize so renowned a youth, but they did it with such insulting 
condescension that the spirit of Ulrich revolted; and in 1509, the 
wayward scholar was again a wanderer, with the world before 
him where to choose. The Lotzes, who had lent him clothe*, 
despatched men after him to strip him ; and the poor, half-frozen 



422- THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

wretch, reached Rostock half starved, more than half naked, with 
wounds gaping for vengeance, and with as little sense about him 
as could be possessed by a man so ill-conditioned. 

He lived by his wits at Rostock. He was unknown and per- 
fectly destitute ; but he penned so spirited a metrical narrative of 
his life and sufferings, addressed to the heads of the university 
there, that these at once received him under their protection. In 
a short time he was installed in comparative comfort, teaching the 
classics to young pupils, and experiencing as much enjoyment as 
he could, considering that the Lotzes of Griefswalde were con- 
tinually assuring his patrons that their protege was a worthless 
impostor. 

He took a poet's revenge, and scourged them in rhymes, the 
very ruggedness of which was tantamount to flaying. 

Having gained his fill of honor at Rostock, his restless spirit 
urged him once again into the world. After much wandering, he 
settled for a season at Wittenburg, where he was the delight of 
the learned men. By their eleemosynary aid, and that of various 
friends, save his father, who rejoiced in his renown but would not 
help him to live, he existed after the fashion of many pauper stu- 
dents of his day. At Wittenburg he wrote his famous " Art of 
Poetry ;" and he had no sooner raised universal admiration by its 
production, than forth he rushed once more into the world. 

He wandered through Bohemia and Moravia, thankfully ac- 
cepting bread from peasants, and diamond rings from princes. 
He had not a maravedi in his purse, nor clean linen on his back ; 
but he made himself welcome everywhere. One night he slept, 
thankfully, on the straw of a barn ; and the next sank, well-fed, 
into the eider-down of a bishop's bed. He entered Olmutz 
ragged, shoeless, and exhausted. He left it, after enjoying the 
rich hospitality he had laughingly extracted from Bishop Turso, 
on horseback, with a heavy purse in his belt, a mantle on his 
shoulder, and a golden ring, with a jewel set in it, upon his finger. 
Such were a student's vicissitudes, in the days of German wan- 
dering, a long time ago. 

The boy, for he was not yet twenty years of age, betook him- 
self to Vienna, where he kept a wide circle in continual rapture 
by Ihe excellence of his poetical productions. These productions 



ULRICH VON HUTTEN. 423 

were not " all for love," nor were they all didactic. He poured 
out war-ballads to encourage the popular feeling in favor of the 
Emperor Maximilian, against his enemies in Germany and Italy. 
Ulrich was, for the moment, the Tyrtaeus of his native country. 
Then, suddenly recollecting that his angry sire had said that if 
his son would not take the monk's cowl, his father would be con- 
tent to see him assume the lawyer's coif, our volatile hero hastened 
to Pavia, opened the law books on an ominous 1st of April, 1512, 
and read them steadily, yet wearied of them heartily, during just 
three months. 

At this time Francis the first of France, who had seized on 
Pavia, was besieged therein by the German and Swiss cavalry. 
Ulrich was dangerously ill during the siege, but he occupied the 
weary time by writing sharp epitaphs upon himself. The allies 
entered the city; and Ulrich straightway departed from it, a 
charge having been laid against him of too much partiality for 
the French. The indignant German hurried to Bologna, where 
he once more addressed himself to the Pandects and the Juris 
Codices Gentium. 

This light reading so worked on his constitution that fever laid 
him low, and after illness came destitution. He wrote exquisite 
verses to Cardinal Gurk, the imperial embassador in Bologna, 
where the pope for the moment resided ; but he failed in his object 
of being raised to some office in the cardinal's household. Poor 
Ulrich took the course often followed by men of his impulses and 
condition ; he entered the army as a private soldier, and began 
the ladder which leads to knighthood at the lowest round. 

Unutterable miseries he endured in this character ; but he went 
through the siege of Pavia with honor, and he wrote such spark- 
ling rhymes in celebration of German triumphs and in ridicule of 
Germany's foes, that, when a weakness in the ankles compelled 
him to retire from the army, he collected his songs and dedicated 
them to the Emperor. 

The dedication, however, was so very independent of tone, that 
Maximilian took no notice of the limping knight who had ex- 
changed the sword for the lyre. Indeed, at this juncture, the man 
who could wield a sledge-hammer, was in more esteem with the 
constituted authorities than he avIio skilfully used his pen. The 



424 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

youDg poet could scarcely win a smile, even from Albert of Bra- 
denburg, to whom he had dedicated a poem. Sick at heart, his 
health gave way, and a heavy fever sent him to recover it at the 
healing springs in the valley of Ems. 

A short time previous to his entering the army, the young 
Duke Ulrich of Wurtemburg had begun to achieve for himself a 
most unenviable reputation. He had entered on his government ; 
and he governed his people ill, and himself worse. He allowed 
nothing to stand between his own illustrious purpose and the 
object aimed at. He had for wife the gentle Bavarian princess, 
Sabina, and for friend, young Johan von Hutten, a cousin of our 
hero Ulrich. 

Now, Johan von Hutten had recently married a fair-haired 
girl, with the not very euphonious appellation of Yon Thumb. 
She was, however, of noble birth, and, we must add, of light prin- 
ciples. The duke fell in love with her, and she with the duke, 
and when his friend Johan remonstrated with him, the ducal 
sovereign gravely proposed to the outraged husband an exchange 
of consorts ! 

Johan resolved to withdraw from the ducal court ; and this res- 
olution alarmed both his wife and the duke, for Johan had no in- 
tention of leaving his lightsome Von Thumb behind him. There-** 
fore, the duke invited Johan one fine May morning in the year 
1515, to take a friendly ride with him through a wood. The in- 
vitation was accepted, and as Johan was riding along a narrow 
path, in front of the duke, the latter passed his sword through the 
body of his friend, slaying him on the spot. 

Having thus murdered his friend, the duke hung him up by 
the neck in his own girdle to a neighboring tree, and he de- 
fended the deed, by giving out that ducal justice had only been 
inflicted on a traitor who had endeavored to seduce the Duchess 
of Wurtemburg! The lady, however, immediately fled to her 
father, denouncing the faithlessness of her unworthy husband, on 
whose bosom the young widow of the murdered Johan now re- 
clined for consolation. 

On this compound deed becoming known, all Germany uttered 
a unanimous cry of horror. The noblest of the duke's subjects 
flung off their allegiance. His very servants quitted him in dis- 



ULRICH VON HUTTEN. 425 

gust. His fellow-princes invoked justice against liim and Ulrich 
von Hutten, from his sick couch at Ems, penned eloquent appeals 
to the German nation, to rise and crush the ruthless wretch who 
had quenched in blood, the life, the light, the hope, the very flower 
of Teutonic chivalry. 

The " Philippics" of Ulrich were mainly instrumental in raising 
a terrible Nemesis to take vengeance upon his ducal namesake ; 
and he afterward wrote his " Phalarismus" to show that the tyrant 
excited horror, even in the infernal regions. The opening sentence 
— " Jacta est alea !" became his motto ; and his family took for its 
apt device — " Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor!" From 
this time forward, Ulrich von Hutten was a public man, and be- 
came one of the foremost heroes of his heroic age. He was now 
scholar, poet, and knight. 

His fame would have been a pleasant thing to him, but the 
pleasure was temporarily diminished by the death of his old bene- 
factor, Eitelwolf von Stein. The latter was the first German 
statesman who was also a great scholar ; and his example first 
shook the prejudice, that for a knight or nobleman to be book- 
learned was derogatory to his chivalry and nobility. Into the 
area of public warfare Ulrich now descended, and the enemies of 
light trembled before the doughty champion. The collegiate 
teachers at Cologne, with Hogstraten, the Inquisitor, Pfefierkorri, 
a converted Jew, and Ortuin — at their head, had directed all the 
powers of the scholastic prejudices against Reuchlin and his fol- 
lowers, who had declared, that not only Greek, but Hebrew 
should form a portion of the course of study for those destined to 
enter the Church. The ancient party pronounced this Heathen- 
ism ; Reuchlin and Ins party called it Reason, and Germany, was 
split in two, upon the question. 

At the very height of the contest, a lad with a sling and a stone 
entered the lists, and so dexterously worked his missiles, that the 
enemy of learning was soon overcome. The lad was Yon Hut- 
ten, who, as chief author of those amusing satires, " Epistolae 
Obscurorum Virorum," ruined Monkery and paralyzed Rome, by 
making all the world laugh at the follies, vices, crimes, and selfish 
ignorance of both. 

Leo X. was so enraged, that he excommunicated the authors, 



426 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

4 

and devoted them to damnation. " I care no more," said Von 
Hutten, " for the bull of excommunication than I do for a soap- 
bubble." The reputation he had acquired, helped him to a recon- 
ciliation with his family ; but the members thereof had only small 
respect for a mere learned knight. They urged him to qualify 
himself for a chancellor, and to repair to Rome, and study the law 
accordingly. 

Something loath, he turned his face toward the Tyber, in 1515. 
The first news received of the law-student was to the effect, that 
having been attacked, dagger in hand, at a pic-nic, near Viterbo, 
by five French noblemen, whom he had reproved for speaking ill 
of Germany and the Emperor Maximilian, he had slain one 
and put the other four to flight. From this fray he himself es- 
caped with a slash on the cheek. He recounted his victory in a 
song of triumph, and when the law-student sat down to his books, 
every one in Rome acknowledged that his sword and his pen were 
equally pointed. 

His French adversaries threatened vengeance for their humili- 
ating defeat ; and he accordingly avoided it, by withdrawing to 
Bologne, where he again, with hearty disgust, applied himself to 
the severe study of a law which was never applied for justice sake. 
He found compensation in penning such stirring poetry as his sa- 
tirical " Nemo," and in noting the vices of the priesthood with the 
intention of turning his observation to subsequent profit. A feud 
between the German and Italian students at Bologna soon drove 
our scholar from the latter place. He took himself to Ferrara 
and Venice ; was welcomed everywhere by the learned and liberal, 
and, as he wrote to Erasmus, was loaded by them with solid pud- 
ding as well as empty praise. 

From this journey he returned to his native country. He re- 
paired to Augsburg, where Maximilian was holding court, and so 
well was he commended to the emperor, that on the 15th of June, 
1517, that monarch dubbed him Imperial Knight, placed a gold 
ring, symbolic of chivalrous dignity, on his finger, and crowned 
him a poet, with a laurel wreath, woven by the fairest flower of 
Augsburg, Constance Peutinger. 

After such honors, his father received him with joy at his 
hearth: and while Von Hutten went from his native Stackel- 



ULRICH VON HUTTEN. 427 

berg to the library at Fulda, yet hesitating whether to take 
service under the Emperor or under the Elector of Mayence, 
he bethought himself of the irrefutable work of Laurentius 
Valla against the temporal authority and possessions of the 
Popedom. He studied the work well, published an improved 
edition, and dedicated it, in a letter of fire and ability, to Leo X. ; 
— a proof of his hope in, or of his defiance of, that accomplished 
infidel. 

Luther and Von Hutten were thus, each unconscious of the 
other, attacking Popery on two points, about the same moment. 
Luther employed fearful weapons in his cause, and wielded them 
manfully. Von Hutten only employed, as yet, a wit which made 
all wither where it fell ; and an irony which consumed where it 
dropped. In the handling of these appliances, there was no man 
in Germany who was his equal. Leo could admire and enjoy 
both the wit and the irony ; and he was not disinclined to agree 
with the arguments of which they were made the supports ; but 
what he relished as a philosopher, he condemned as a Pontiff. 
The Florentine, Lorenzo de' Medici, could have kissed the German 
on either cheek, but the Pope, Leo X., solemnly devoted him to 
Gehenna. 

As a protection against papal wrath, Von Hutten entered the 
service of Albert, Elector- Archbishop of Mayence. Albert was 
a liberal Romanist, but nothing in the least of an Ultra-Montanist. 
He loved learning and learned men, and he recollected that he 
was a German before he was a Romanist. In the suite of the 
elector, Von Hutten visited Paris, in 1518. He returned to 
Mayence only to carry on more vigorously his onslaught against 
the begging monks. He accounted them as greater enemies to 
Germany than the Turks. " TV r e fight with the latter, beyond our 
frontier for power ; but the former are the corrupters of science, 
of religion, of morals — and they are in the very midst of us." 
So does he write, in a letter to Graf Nuenar, at Cologne. 

The building of St. Peter's cost Rome what the building of 
Versailles cost France — a revolution. In each case, an absolute 
monarchy was overthrown never again to rise. To provide for 
the expenses of St. Peter's, the Dominican Tetzel traversed Ger- 
many, selling his indulgences. 



428 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

nounced his mission, as well as those who sent him on it. Von 
Hutten, in his hatred of monks, looked upon this as a mere monk- 
ish squabble ; and he was glad to see two of the vocation holding 
one another by the throat. 

At this precise moment, Germany was excited at the idea of a 
projected European expedition against the Turks. The Imperial 
Knight saw clearly the perils that threatened Christendom from 
that question, and was ready to rush, sword in hand, to meet them. 
He declared, however, that Europe groaned under a more insup- 
portable yoke, laid on by Rome, and he deprecated the idea of 
helping Rome with funds against the Moslem. What a change 
was here from the Imperial crusading knights of a few centuries 
earlier. " If Rome," he said, " be serious on the subject of such 
a crusade, we are ready to fight, but she must pay us for our ser- 
vices. She shall not have both our money and our blood." He 
spoke, wrote, and published boldly against Rome being permitted 
to levy taxes in Germany, on pretence of going to war with the 
unbelieving Ottomans. At the same moment, Luther was de- 
nouncing the monks who thought to enrich the coffers of Rome 
by the sale of indulgences. One was the political, the other the 
religious enemy of the power which sought to rule men and their 
consciences from under the shadow of the Colosseum. 

There was little hope of aid from the emperor, but Von Hutten 
looked for all the help the cause needed in a union of the citizen 
classes (whom he had been wont to satirize) with the nobility. 
To further the end in view, he wrote his masterly dialogue of 
" The Robbers." In this piece, the speakers are knights and 
citizens. Each side blames the other, but each is made acquainted 
with the other's virtues, by the interposition of a Deus ex machina 
in the presence of the knight, Franz von Sickingen. The whole 
partakes of the spirit and raciness of Bunyan and Cobbett. 
Throughout the dialogue, the vices of no party in the state find 
mercy, while the necessity of the mutual exercise of virtue and 
aid is ably expounded. 

The knight, Franz von Sickingen, was author of a part of this 
dialogue. His adjurations to Von Hutten not to be over-hasty 
and his reason why, are no doubt his own. By the production 
of such papers, Germany was made eager for the fray. This 



ULRICH VON HUTTEN. 429 

particular and powerful dialogue was dedicated to John, Pfalzgraf 
of the Rhine, Duke of Bavaria, and Count of Spanheim. This 
illustrious personage had requested Ulrich that whenever he pub- 
lished any particularly bold book, in support of national liberty, 
he would dedicate it to him, the duke. The author obeyed, in 
this instance, on good grounds and with right good will. There 
is in the dialogue an audible call to war, and this pleased Luther 
himself, who was now convinced that with the pen alone, the 
Reformation could not be an established fact. 

Ulrich longed for the contact, whereby to make his country and 
his church free of Romanist tyranny. But he considers the pos- 
sibility of a failure. He adjured his family to keep aloof from 
the strife, that they might not bring ruin on their heads, in the 
event of destruction falling on his own. The parents of Ulrich 
were now no more ; Ulrich as head of his house was possessed 
of its modest estates. Of his own possessions he got rid, as of an 
encumbrance to his daring and his gigantic activity. He formally 
made over nearly all to his next brother, in order that his enemies, 
should they ultimately triumph, might have no ground for seizing 
them. 

At the same time, he warned his brother to send him neither 
letters nor money, as either would be considered in the light of 
aid offered to an enemy, and might be visited with terrible 
penalties. 

Having rid himself of what few would so easily have parted 
from, he drew his sword joyously and independently for the sake 
of liberty alone, and with a determination of never sheathing it 
until he had accomplished that at which he aimed, or that the ac- 
complishment of such end had been placed beyond his power. 

" Jacta est alea," cried he, viewing his bright sword, " the die 
is thrown, Ulrich has risked it." 

In the meantime Von Hutten remained in the service of the 
Elector- Archbishop of Mayenee. The courtiers laughed at him 
as a rude knight. The knights ridiculed him as a poor philoso- 
pher. Both were mistaken ; he was neither poor nor rude, albeit 
a Bitter and a sage. What he most cared for, was opportunity 
to be useful in his generation, and leisure enough to cultivate 
learning during the hours he might call his own. His satirical 



430 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

poems, coarsely enough worded against a courtier's life, are ad- 
mirable for strength and coloring. Not less admirable for taste 
and power are his letters of this period. In them he denounces 
that nobility which is composed solely of family pride ; and he 
denounces, with equally good foundation, the life of " Robber 
Knights," as he calls them, who reside in their castles, amid every 
sort of discomfort, and a world of dirt, of hideous noises, and un- 
savory smells ; and who only leave them to plunder or to be plun- 
dered. He pronounces the true knights of the period to be those 
alone who love religion and education. With the aid of these, 
applied wisely and widely, and with the help of great men whom 
he names, and who share his opinions, he hopes, as he fervently 
declares, to see intellect gain more victories than force— to be 
able to bid the old barbarous spirit which still influenced too many 
" to gird up its loins and be off." Health came to him with this 
determination to devote himself to the service and improvement 
of his fellow-men. It came partly by the use of simple remedies, 
the chief of which was moderation in all things. Pen and sword 
were now alike actively employed. He put aside the former, for 
a moment, only to assume the latter, in order to strike in for ven- 
geance against the aggressive Duke of Wurtemburg. 

The crimes of this potentate had at length aroused the emperor 
against him. Maximilian had intrusted the leadership of his 
army to the famous knight-errant of his day, Franz von Sickingen. 
This cavalier had often been in open rebellion against the emperor 
himself; and Hutten now enrolled himself among the followers 
of Franz. His patron not only gave him the necessary permis- 
sion but continued to him his liberal stipend ; when the two knights 
met, and made their armor clash with their boisterous embrace, 
they swor"e not to stop short of vengeance on the guilty duke, but 
to fight to the death for liberty and Christendom. They slept 
together in the same bed in token of brotherly knighthood, and 
they rose to carry their banner triumphantly against the duke — 
ending the campaign by the capture of the metropolis, Stutgardt. 

Reuchlin resided in the capital, and the good man was full of 
fear ; for murder and rapine reigned around him. His fear was 
groundless, for Von Hutten had urged Sickingen to give out that 
in the sack of Stutgardt, no man should dare to assail the dwel- 



ULEICH VON HUTTEN. 431 

ling of Reuchlin. The two knights left the city to proceed to the 
spot in the wood where still lay buried the body of the murdered 
John von Hutten. " It had lain four years in the grave," said 
Ulrich, " but the features were unchanged. As we touched him, 
blood flowed afresh from his wounds ; recognise in this the witness 
of his innocence." The corpse was eventually transported to the 
family vault at Esslingen. 

The cities of the hard-pressed duke fell, one after the other, 
and the guilty prince was driven from his inheritance. Von Hut- 
ten remained with the army, busily plying his pen ; his sword on 
the table before him, his dagger on his hip, and himself encased 
in armor to the throat. Erasmus laughingly wrote to him to leave 
Mars and stick to the Muses. He scarcely needed this advice, 
for his letters from the camp show that fond as he was of the field, 
he loved far better the quiet joys of the household hearth. Amid 
the brazen clangor of trumpets, the neighing of steeds, the rolling 
of the drum, and the boom of battle, he writes to Piscator 
(Fischer), his longing for home, and his desire for a wife to smile 
on, and care for him ; one wiio would soothe his griefs and share 
his labors — "One," he says, "with whom I might sportively 
laugh and feel glad in our existence — who would sweeten the 
bitter of life and alleviate the pressure of care. Let me have a 
wife, my dear Friederich, and thou knowest how I would love 
her .... young, fair, shy, gentle, affectionate, and well-educated. 
She may have some fortune, but not excess of it ; and as for posi- 
tion, this is my idea thereon : that she will be noble enough whom 
Ulrich von Hutten chooses for his mate." As a wooer, it will be 
seen that the scholar-knight had as little of the faint heart as the 
audacious " Findlay" of Burns, and I might almost say of Freili- 
grath, so spiritedly has the latter poet translated into German the 
pleasant lines of the Ayrshire ploughman. 

Well had it been for Ulrich had he found, in 1519, the wife of 
his complacent visions. The gentle hand would have saved him 
from many a cruel hour. 

On his return to Mayence he had well-nigh obeyed the universal 
call addressed to him, to join openly with Luther against Rome. 
He was withheld by his regard for his liberal patron, the arch- 
bishop. He remained, partly looking on and partly aiding, on the 



432 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

outskirts of the field where the fray was raging. He published a 
superb edition of Livy, and to show that the reforming spirit still 
burned brightly in the bosom of the scholar, he also published his 
celebrated "Vadiscus, sive Trias Romana." This triple-edged 
weapon still inflicts anguish on Rome. Never had arrow of such 
power stricken the harlot before. Its point is still in her side ; 
and her adversaries knew well how to use it, by painfully turning 
it in the wound. 

The knight now hung up his sword in his chamber at Stackel- 
berg, and devoted himself to his pen. In the convent library at 
Fulda he discovered an ancient German work against the suprem- 
acy of the Pope over the princes and people of Germany. Of 
this he made excellent use. His own productions against Rome 
followed one another with great rapidity. Down to the middle of 
1520 he was incessantly charging the Vatican, at the point of a 
grey goosequill. He had at heart the freeing of Germany from 
the ecclesiastical domination of Italy, just as the men of Northern 
Italy have it at heart to rescue her from the cruel domination of 
Austria. 

To accomplish his ends, Von Hutten left no means untried. 
Knight and scholar, noble and villain, the very Emperor Charles 
V. himself, Ulrich sought to enlist in the great confederacy, by 
which he hoped to strike a mortal blow at the temporal power of 
the " Universal Bishop." His books converted even some of the 
diocesans of the Romish Church ; but Rome thundered excommu- 
nication on the books and their author, and directed a heavy 
weight of censure against his protector, Albert of Mayence. 

The archbishop admonished Von Hutten, and interdicted his 
works. This step decided Ulrich's course. He at once addressed 
his first letter to Luther. It began with the cry of " Freedom for 
ever !" and it offered heart, head, soul, body, brains, and purse, in 
furtherance of the great cause. He tendered to Luther, in the 
name of Sickingen, a secure place of residence ; and he established 
his first unassailable battery against Rome, by erecting a printing- 
press in his own room in the castle of Stackelberg, whence he di- 
rected many a raking fire against all his assailants. " Jacta est 
alea !" was his cry ; " Let the enemies of light look to it !" 

From Fulda he started to the court of the Emperor Charles V. 



ULRICH VON HUTTEN. 433 

at Brussels. But his enemies stood between him and the foot of 
the throne, and he was not allowed to approach it. His life, too, 
was being constantly threatened. He withdrew before these 
threats, once more into Germany, taking compensation by the 
way, for his disappointment, by a characteristic bit of spirit. He 
happened to fall in with Hogstraten, the heretic-finder, and the 
arch-enemy of Reuchlin. Ulrich belabored him with a sheathed 
sword till every bone in the body of Hogstraten was sore. In re- 
turn, the knight was outlawed, and Leo X. haughtily commanded 
that hands should be laid upon him wherever he might be found, 
and that he should be delivered, gagged, and bound, to the Roman 
tribunals. 

Franz von Sickingen immediately received him within the safe 
shelter of his strong fortress of Ebernberg, where already a score 
of renowned theological refugees had found an asylum. The col- 
loquies of the illustrious fugitives made the old walls ring again. 
Von Hutten reduced these colloquies to writing, and I may name, 
as one of their conclusions, that the service of the mass in German 
was determined on, as the first step toward an established refor- 
mation. 

The attempt of the Pope to have Ulrich seized and sacrificed, 
was eagerly applied by the latter to the benefit of the cause he 
loved. To the emperor, to the elector, to the nobles, knights, and 
states of Germany, he addressed papers full of patriotism, elo- 
quence, and wisdom, against the aggression on German liberty. 
Throughout Germany this scholar-knight called into life the spirit 
of civil and religious freedom, and Luther, looking upon what 
Ulrich was doing, exclaimed : " Surely the last day is at hand !" 

These two men, united, lit up a flame which can never be trod- 
den out. One took his Bible and his pen, and with these pricked 
Rome into a fury, from which she has never recovered. The 
other, ungirding his sword, and transferring his printing-press to 
Ebernberg, sent therefrom glowing manifestoes which made a 
patriot of every reader. 

The lyre and learning were both now employed by Yon Hutten, 
in furtherance of his project. His popular poetry was now read 
or sung at every hearth. Not a village was without a copy, often 
to be read by stealth, of his " Complaint and Admonition." His 

28 



434 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

dialogues, especially that called the " Warner," in which the collo- 
quists are a Roman alarmist and Franz von Sickingen himself, 
achieved a similar triumph. It was to give heart to the wavering 
that Yon Hutten wrote, and sent abroad from his press at Ebern- 
berg, those remarkable dialogues. 

Franz von Sickingen, his great protector, was for a season ap- 
prehensive that Ulrich's outcry against Rome was louder than 
necessary, and his declared resolution to resent oppression by 
means of the sword, somewhat profane. Ulrich reasoned with 
and read to the gallant knight. His own good sense, and the ar- 
guments of Luther and Ulrich, at length convinced him that it was 
folly and sin to maintain outward respect for Rome as long as the 
latter aspired to be lord in Germany, above the kaiser himself. 
Franz soon agreed with Hutten that they ought not to heed even 
the Emperor, if he commanded them to spare the Pope, when 
such mercy might be productive of injury to the empire. In such 
cases, not to obey was the best obedience. They would not now 
look back. " It is better," so runs it in Von Hutten's " Warner," 
" to consider what God's will is, than what may enter the heads 
of individuals, capricious men, more especially in the case wherein 
the truth of the Gospel is concerned. If it be proved that nothing 
satisfactory, by way of encouragement, can come to us from the 
Emperor, they who love the Church and civil liberty must be bold 
at their own peril, let the issue be what it may." 
*The dialogue of the "Warner" was, doubtless, not only read to 
Sickingen during the progress of its composition, but was unques- 
tionably a transcript of much that was talked about, weighed, and 
considered between the two friends, as they sat surrounded by a 
circle of great scholars and soldiers, for whose blood Rome was 
thirsting. It ends with an assurance of the full adhesion of Franz 
to the views of Ulrich. " In this matter," says the " Warner" to 
the knight of Ebernberg, " I see you have a passionate and zealous 
instigator, a fellow named Von Hutten, who can brook delay with 
patience, and who has heaped piles upon piles of stones, ready to 
fling them at the first adversary who presents himself." "Ay, 
in good sooth " is the ready answer of Franz, " and his service is 
a joy to me, for he has the true spirit requisite to insure triumph 
in such a struggle as ours." 



ULRICH VON HUTTEN. 435 

Thus at Ebernburg the battery was played against the defences 
of Rome, while Luther, from his known abodes, or from his con- 
cealment in friendly fortresses, thundered his artillery against the 
doctrines and superstitions of Eome. The movement had a 
double aspect. The Germans were determined to be free both as 
Christians and as citizens. The conducting of such determination 
to its successful issue could not be intrusted to worthier or more 
capable hands than those of Luther, aided by the Saxon Frede- 
rick the Wise, and Ulrich yon Hutten, with such a squire at his 
side as hearty Franz yon Sickingen. 

In 1521 the young emperor, Charles V., delivered a speech at 
Worms, which seemed to have been framed expressly to assure 
the reformers that the emperor was with them. It abounded in 
promises that the kaiser would do his utmost to effect necessary 
reforms within the empire. The reformers were in great spirits, 
but they soon learned, by the summoning of Luther to Worms, 
and by the subsequent conduct of the emperor, that they had noth- 
ing to expect from him which they could thankfully acknowledge. 

Ulrich only wrote the more boldly, and agitated the more un- 
ceasingly, in behalf of the cause of winch Luther was the great 
advocate. To the kaiser himself he addressed many a daring 
epistle, as logical as audacious, in order to induce him to shake 
off the yoke of Rome, and be master of the Roman world, by 
other sanction than that of German election and papal consent. 
Von Hutten was more bold and quite as logical in his witheringly 
sarcastic epistles addressed to the pope's legates at Worms. These 
epistles show that if at the time there was neither a recognised 
liberty of the press nor of individual expression, the times them- 
selves were so out of joint that men dared do much which their 
masters dared not resent. 

To the entire body of the priesthood assembled at Worms to 
confront Luther, he addressed similar epistles. They abound in 
'• thoughts that breathe, and words that burn." In every word 
there is defiance. Every sentence is a weapon. Every paragraph 
is an engine of war. The writer scatters his deadly missiles 
around him, threatening all, wounding many, sometimes indeed 
breaking his own head by rash management, but careless of all 
such accidents as long as he can reach, terrify, maul, and put to 



436 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

flight the crowd of enemies who have conspired to suppress both 
learning and religion in Germany. 

In unison with Sickingen, he earnestly entreated Luther to 
repair to Ebernburg rather than to Worms, as there his knightly 
friends would protect him from all assailants. The reply of the 
great reformer is well known. He would go to Worms, he said, 
though there were as many devils as tiles on the roofs, leagued 
against him to oppose his journey thither. We can not doubt but 
that Luther would have been judicially assassinated in that ancient 
city but for the imposing front assumed by his well-armed and 
well-organized adherents, who not only crowded into the streets 
of Worms, but who announced by placards, even in the very bed- 
chamber of the emperor, that a thousand lives should pay for the 
loss of one hair of the reformer's head. 

Had it depended on Yon Hutten, the reformers would not have 
waited till violence had been inflicted on Luther, ere they took 
their own revenge for wrongs and oppressions done. But he was 
overruled, and his hot blood was kept cool by profuse and prosaic 
argument on the part of the schoolmen of his faction. He chafed, 
but he obeyed. He had more difficulty in reducing to the same 
obedience the bands of his adherents who occupied the city and 
its vicinity. These thought that the safety of Luther could only 
be secured by rescuing him at once from the hands of his enemies. 
The scholar-knight thought so too; and he would gladly have 
charged against such enemies. He made no signal, however, for 
the onslaught ; on the contrary he issued orders forbidding it ; and 
recommended the confederates to sheathe their swords, but yet 
to have their hands on the hilt. The elector of Saxony was ad- 
verse to violence, and Luther left Worms in safety, after defying 
Rome to her face. 

Then came those unquiet times in which Charles V. so warmly 
welcomed volunteers to his banner. Seduced by his promises, 
Franz von Sickingen, with a few hundreds of strong-sinewed men, 
passed over to the Imperial quarters. The old brotherly gather- 
ing at Ebernberg was thus broken up ; and Ulrich, who had 
offended both pope and emperor by his denunciations of ecclesi- 
astical and civil tyranny, betook himself to Switzerland, where he 
hoped to find a secure asylum, and a welcome from Erasmus. 



ULRICH VON HUTTEN. 437 

This amphibious personage, however, who had already ceased to 
laud Luther, affected now a horror against Von Hutten. He wrote 
of him as a poor, angry, mangy wretch, who could not be content 
to live in a room without a stove, and who was continually pes- 
tering his friends for pecuniary loans. The fiery Ulrich assailed 
his false friend in wrathful pamphlets. Erasmus loved the species 
of warfare into which such attacks drew or impelled him. He 
replied to Ulrich more cleverly than conclusively, in his " Sponge 
to wipe out the Aspersions of Von Hutten." But the enmity of 
Erasmus was as nothing compared with the loss of Von Sickingen 
himself. In the tumultuary wars of his native land he perished, 
and Ulrich felt that, despite some errors, the good cause had lost 
an iron-handed and a clear-sighted champion. 

There is little doubt that it was at the instigation of Erasmus 
that the priestly party in Basle successfully urged the government 
authorities to drive Ulrich from the asylum he had temporarily 
found there. He quietly departed on issue of the command, and 
took his solitary and painful way to Muhlhausen, where a host 
of reformers warmly welcomed the tottering skeleton into which 
had shrunk the once well-knit man. Here his vigor cast aloft its 
last expiring light. Muhlhausen threw off the papal yoke, but 
the papist party was strong enough there to raise an insurrection ; 
and rather than endanger the safety of the town, the persecuted 
scholar and soldier once more walked forth to find a shelter. He 
reached Zurich in safety. He went at once to the hearth of 
Zuinglius, who looked upon the terrible spectre in whom the eyes 
alone showed signs of life ; and he could hardly believe that the 
pope cared for the person, or dreaded the intellect, of so ghostlike 
a champion as this. 

Ulrich, excommunicated, outlawed and penniless, was in truth 
sinking fast. His hand had not strength to enfold the pommel 
of his sword. From his unconscious fingers dropped the pen. 

" Who will defend me against my calumniators ?" asked the yet 
willing but now incapable man. 

" I will !" said the skilful physician, Otto Brunfels ; and the 
cooper's son stoutly protected the good name of Ulrich, after the 
latter was at peace in the grave. 

The last hours of the worn-out straggler for civil and religious 



438 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

liberty, were passed at Ufnau, a small island in the Lake of 
Zurich. He had been with difficulty conveyed thither, in the 
faint hope that his health might profit by the change. There he 
slowly and resignedly died on the last day of August, 1523, and 
at the early age of thirty-eight. 

A few dearly-loved books and some letters constituted all his 
property. He was interred on the island, but no monument has 
ever marked the spot where his wornout body was laid down to 
repose. 

Through life, whether engaged with sword or pen, his absorbing 
desire was that his memory might be held dear by his survivors. 
He loved activity, abhorred luxury, adored liberty ; and, for the 
sake of civil and religious freedom, he fought and sang with ear- 
nest alacrity. Lyre on arm, and sword in hand, he sang and 
summoned, until hosts gathered round him, and cheered the bur- 
then of all he uttered. " The die is thrown ! I've risked it for 
truth and freedom's sake." Against pope and kaiser, priest and 
soldier, he boldly cried, " Slay my frame you may, but my soul is 
beyond you !" He was the star that harbingered a bright dawn. 
His prevailing enemies drove him from his country ; the grave 
which they would have denied him, he found in Switzerland, and 
"after life's fitful fever," the scholar-knight sleeps well in the 
island of the Zurich-Zee. 

From the Zurich-Zee we will now retrace our steps, and con- 
sider the Sham Knights. 



SHAM KNIGHTS. 439 



SHAM KNIGHTS. 

Between Tooting and 'Wandsworth lies a village of some 
celebrity for its sham knights or mayors — the village of Garrat. 
The villagers, some century ago, possessed certain common 
rights which were threatened with invasion. They accordingly 
made choice of an advocate, from among themselves, to protect 
their privileges. They succeeded in their object, and as the 
selection had been originally made at the period of a general 
election, the inhabitants resolved to commemorate the circumstance 
by electing a mayor and knighting him at each period of election 
for a new parliament. The resolution was warmly approved by 
all the publicans in the vicinity, and the Garrat elections became 
popular festivities, if not of the highest order, at least of the 
jolliest sort. 

Not that the ceremony was without its uses. The politicians 
and wits of the day saw how the election might be turned to 
profit ; and TTilkes, and Foote, and Garrick, are especially named 
as having written some of the addresses wherein, beneath much 
fustian, fun, and exaggeration of both fact and humor, the people 
were led to notice, by an Aristophanic process, the defects in the 
political system by which the country was then governed. The 
publicans, however, and the majority of the people cared more 
for the saturnalia than the schooling ; and for some years the sham 
mayors of Garrat were elected, to the great profit, at least, of the 
tavern-keepers. 

The poorer and the more deformed the candidate, the greater 
his chance of success. Thus, the earliest mayor of whom there 
was any record, was Sir John Harper, a fellow of infinite mirth 
and deformity, whose ordinary occupation was that of an itinerant 
vender of brick-dust. His success gave dignity to the brick-dust 



440 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

trade, and inspired its members with ambition. They had the 
glory of boasting that their friend and brother " Sir John" sat, 
when not sufficiently sober to stand, during two parliaments. A 
specimen of his ready wit is given in his remark when a dead cat 
was flung at him, on the hustings during the period of his first 
election. A companion remarked with some disgust upon the 
unpleasant odor from the animal. " That's not to be wondered 
at," said Sir John, " you see it is a pole-cat." 

But Sir John was ousted by an uglier, dirtier, more deformed, 
and merrier fellow than himself. The lucky personage in ques- 
tion was Sir Jeffrey Dunstan. He was a noted individual, 
hunched like Esop, and with as many tales, though not always 
with the like " morals." He was a noted dealer in old wigs, for 
it was before men had fallen into what was then considered the 
disreputable fashion of wearing their own hair, under round hats. 
Sir John was a republican ; but he did not despise either his office 
of mayor or his courtesy title of knight. Had he possessed more 
discretion and less zeal, he probably would have prospered in pro- 
portion. In the best, that is, in the quietest, of times, Sir Jeffrey 
could with difficulty keep his tongue from wagging. He never 
appeared in the streets with his wig-bag on his shoulder, without 
a numerous crowd following, whom he delighted with his sallies, 
made against men in power, whose weak points were assailable. 
The French Revolution broke out when Sir Jeffrey was mayor, 
and this gave a loose to his tongue, which ultimately laid him up 
by the heels. The knight grew too political, and even seditious, 
in his street orations, and he was in consequence committed to 
prison, in 1793, for treasonable practices. This only increased 
his popularity for a time, but it tamed the spirit of the once 
chivalrous mayor. When he ceased to be wittily bold, he ceased 
to be cared for by the constituents whose presence made the elec- 
tors at Garrat. After being thrice elected he was successfully 
opposed and defeated, under a charge of dishonesty. The pure 
electors of Garrat could have borne with a political traitor ; but 
as they politely said, they " could not a-bear a petty larcenist," 
and Sir Jeffrey Dunstan was, metaphorically and actually present- 
ed " with the sack." 

When Manners Sutton ceased to be Speaker, he claimed, I be- 



SHAM KNIGHTS. 441 

lieve, to be made a peer ; on the plea that it was not becoming 
that he who had once occupied the chair, should ever be reduced 
to stand upon the floor, of the House of Commons. Sir Jeffrey 
Dunstan had something of a similar sense of dignity. Having 
fallen from the height of mayor of Garrat, what was then left 
for Sir Jeffrey ? He got as " drunk as a lord," was never again 
seen sober, and, in 1797, the year following that of his disgrace, 
the ex-mayor died of excess. So nice of honor was Sir Jeffrey 
Dunstan ! 

He was succeeded by Sir Harry Dimsdale, the mutilated muf- 
fin-seller, whose tenure of office was only brief, however brilliant, 
and who has the melancholy glory of having been the last of the 
illustriously dirty line of knighted mayors of Garrat. It was not 
that there was any difficulty in procuring candidates, but there 
was no longer the same liberality on the part of the peers and 
publicans to furnish a purse for them. Originally, the purse was 
made up by the inhabitants, for the purpose of protecting their 
collective rights. Subsequently, the publicans contributed in 
order that the attractions of something like a fair might be added, 
and therewith great increase of smoking and drinking. At that 
time the peerage did not disdain to patronize the proceeding, and 
the day of election was a holyday for thousands. Never before 
or since have such multitudes assembled at the well-known place 
of gathering ; nor the roads been so blocked up by carts and car- 
riages, honorable members on horses, and dustmen on donkeys. 
Hundreds of thousands sometimes assembled, and, through the 
perspiring crowd, the candidates, dressed like chimney-sweepers 
on May-day, or in the mock fashion of the period, were brought 
to the hustings in the carriages of peers, drawn by six horses, the 
owners themselves condescending to become their drivers. 

The candidate was ready to swear anything, and each elector 
was required to make oath, on a brick-bat, " quod rem cum aliqua 
muliere intra limites istius pagi habuissent." The candidates 
figured under mock pseudonyms. Thus, at one election there 
were against Sir Jeffrey, Lord Twankum, Squire Blowmedown, 
and Squire Gubbings. His lordship was Gardener, the Garrat 
grave-digger, and the squires were in humble reality, Willis, a 
waterman, and Simmonds, a Southwark publican. An attempt 



442 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

was made to renew the old saturnalia in 1826, when Sir John 
Paul Pry offered himself as a candidate, in very bad English, and 
with a similarly qualified success. He had not the eloquent power 
of the great Sir Jeffrey, who, on presenting himself to the electors 
named his " estate in the Isle of Man" as his qualification ; an- 
nounced his intention of relieving the king in his want of money, 
by abolishing its use ; engaged to keep his promises as long as it 
was his interest to do so, and claimed the favorable influence of 
married ladies, on the assurance that he would propose the annul- 
ling of all marriages, which, as he said, with his ordinary logic, 
" must greatly increase the influence of the crown, and vastly low- 
er Indian bonds." He intimated that his own ambition was lim- 
ited to the governorship of Duck Island, or the bishopric of 
Durham. The latter appointment was mentioned for the pur- 
pose of enabling the usually shirtless, but for the moment 
court-dressed knight, to add that he was " fond of a clean shirt 
and lawn-sleeves." He moreover undertook to show the gov- 
ernors of India the way which they ought to be going, to Botany 
Bay ; and to discover the longitude among the Jews of Duke's 
Place. 

Courtesy was imperative on all the candidates toward each 
other. When Sir Jeffrey Dunstan opposed Sir "William Harper, 
there were five other candidates, namely — " Sir William Blaze, 
of high rank in the arniy — a corporal in the city train-bands ; 
Admiral Sir Christopher Dashwood, known to many who has 
(sic) felt the weight of his hand on their shoulders, and showing 
an execution in the other. Sir William Swallowtail, an eminent 
merchant, who supplies most of the gardeners with strawberry 
baskets ; Sir John Gnawpost, who carries his traffic under his left 
arm, and whose general cry is ' twenty-five if you win and five if 
you lose ;' and Sir Thomas Nameless, of reputation unmentiona- 
ble." Sir John Harper was the only knight who forgot chival- 
rous courtesy, and who allowed his squire in armor to insult Sir 
Jeffrey. But this was not done with impunity. That knight ap- 
pealed to usage, compelled his assailant to dismount, drop 
his colors, walk six times round the hustings, and humbly ask 
pardon. 

Sir William Swallowtail, mentioned above, " was one William 



SHAM KNIGHTS. 443 

Cock, a whimsical basket-maker of Brentford, who, deeming it 
proper to have an equipage every way suitable to the honor he 
aspired to, built his own carriage, with his own hands, to Ins own 
taste. It was made of wicker work, and was drawn by four, high, 
hollow-backed horses, whereon were seated dwarfish boys, whim- 
sically dressed, for postillions. In allusion to the American War, 
two footmen, tarred and feathered, rode before the carriage. The 
coachman wore a wicker hat, and Sir William himself, from the 
seat of his vehicle, maintained his mock dignity, in grotesque ar- 
ray, amid unbounded applause." It should be added that Foote, 
who witnessed the humors of the election more than once, brought 
Sir Jeffrey upon the stage in the character of Doctor Last ; but 
the wretched fellow, utterly incapable and awfully alarmed, was 
driven from the stage by the hisses of the whole house. Let us 
now look abroad for a few " Shams." 

If foreign lands have sent no small number of pseudo-chevaliers 
to London, they have also abounded in many by far too patriotic 
or prudent to leave their native land. The Hotel Saint Florentin, 
in Paris, was the residence of the Prince Talleyrand, but before 
his time it was the stage and the occasional dwelling-place of an 
extraordinary actor, known by the appellation of the Chevalier, or 
the Count de St. Germain. He was for a time the reigning 
wonder of Paris, where his history was told with many variations ; 
not one true, and all astounding. The popular voice ascribed to 
him an Egyptian birth, and attributed to him the power of work- 
ing miracles. He could cure the dying, and raise the dead ; could 
compose magic philters, coin money by an impress of his index 
finger ; was said to have discovered the philosopher's stone, and to 
be able to make gold and diamonds almost at will. He was, more- 
over, as generous as he was great, and his modest breast was 
covered with knightly orders, in proof of the gratitude of sover- 
eigns whom he had obliged. He was supposed to have been 
born some centuries back, was the most gigantic and graceful im- 
postor that ever lived, and exacted implicit faith in his power from 
people who had none in the power of God. 

The soirees of the Hotel St. Florentin were the admiration of 
all Paris, for there alone, this knight-count of many orders ap- 
peared to charm the visiters and please himself. His prodigality 



444 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

was enormous, so was his mendacity. He was graceful, witty, 
refined, yet not lacking audacity when his story wanted pointing, 
and always young, gave himself out for a Methuselah. 

The following trait is seriously told of him, and is well substan- 
tiated. " Chevalier," said a lady to him one night, at a crowded 
assembly of the Hotel St. Florentin, "do you ever remember 
having, in the course of your voyages, encountered our Lord Jesus 
Christ ?" " Yes," replied the profane impostor, without hesitation 
and raising his eyes to heaven. " I have often seen and often 
spoken to Him. I have frequently had occasion to admire his 
mildness, genius, and charity. He was a celestial being ; and I 
often prophesied what would befall Him !" The hearers, far from 
being shocked, only continued to ply the count with other ques- 
tions. " Did you ever meet with the Wandering Jew ?" asked a 
young marquiss. " Often !" was the reply ; and the count added 
with an air of disdain : — " that wretched blasphemer once dared 
to salute me on the high-road ; he was then just setting out on his 
tour of the world, and counted his money with one hand in his 
pocket, as he passed along." " Count," asked a Chevalier cle St 
Louis, " who was the composer of that brilliant sonata you played 
to-night, on the harpsichord ?" " I really can not say. It is a 
song of victory, and I heard it executed for the first time on the 
day of the triumph of Trajan." " Will you be indiscreet, dear 
count, for once," asked a newly-married baronne, " and tell us the 
names of the three ladies whom you have the most tenderly 
loved ?" " That is difficult," said the honest knight with a smile, 
" but I think I may say that they were Lucretia, Aspasia, and 
Cleopatra." 

The gay world of Paris said he was, at least two thousand 
years old ; and he did not take the pains to contradict the 
report. There is reason to suppose that he was the son of 
a Portuguese Jew, who had resided at Bordeaux. His career 
was soon ended. 

There was a far more respectable chevalier in our own 
country to whom the term of Sham Knight can hardly apply ; 
but as he called himself " Sir John," and that title was not 
admitted in a court of law, some notice of him may be taken 
here. 



SHAM KNIGHTS. 445 

There was then in the reign of George III., a knight of some 
notoriety, whose story is rather a singular one. When Sir John 
Gallini is now spoken of, many persons conclude that this once 
remarkable individual received the honors of knighthood at the 
hands of King George. I have been assured so by very eminent 
operatic authorites, who were, nevertheless, completely in error. 
Sir John Gallini was a knight of George III.'s time, but he was 
so created by a far more exalted individual ; in the opinion, at 
least, of those who give to popes, who are elective potentates, a 
precedence over kings, who are hereditary monarchs. The won- 
der is that Gallini was ever knighted at all, seeing that he was sim- 
ply an admirable ballet-dancer. But he was the first dancer who 
ever received an encore for the dexterous use of his heels. The 
Pope accordingly clapped upon them a pair of golden spurs, and 
Gallini was, thenceforth, Cavaliere del Sperone d'Oro. Such a 
knight may be noticed in this place. 

Gallini came to England at a time when that part of the world, 
which was included in the term " people of quality," stood in need 
of a little excitement. This was in 1759, when there was the 
dullest of courts, with the heaviest of mistresses, and an opera, 
duller and heavier than either. Gallini had just subdued Paris 
by the magic of his saltatory movements. He thence repaired to 
London, with his reputation and slight baggage. He did not an- 
nounce his arrival. It was sufficient that Gallini was there. He 
had hardly entered his lodgings when he was engaged, on his own 
terms. He took the town by storm. His pas seul was pro- 
nounced divine. The " quality" paid him more honor than if he 
had invented something useful to his fellow-men. He could not 
raise his toe, without the house being hushed into silent admi- 
ration. His entrechats were performed amidst thundering echoes 
of delight ; his " whirls" elicited shrieks of ecstacy ; and when he 
suddenly checked himself in the very swiftest of his wild career 
and looked at the house with a complacent smile, which seemed 
to say — " What do you think of that ?" there ensued an explosion 
of tumultuous homage, such as the spectators would have not 
vouchsafed to the young conqueror of Quebec. Gallini, as far as 
opera matters were concerned, was found to be the proper 
man in the proper place. For four or five years he was de- 



446 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

spotic master of the ballet. He was resolved to be master of 
something else. 

There was then in London a Lady Elizabeth Bertie. Her 
father, the Earl of Abingdon, then lately deceased, had, in his 
youth, married a Signora Collino, daughter to a " Sir John Col- 
lins." The latter knight was not English, but of English descent. 
His son, Signor Collino, was a celebrated player of the lute in this 
country. He was indeed the last celebrated player on that instru- 
ment in England. 

Gallini then, the very head of his profession, ranking therein 
higher than the Abingdons did in the peerage, was rather conde- 
scending than otherwise, when he looked upon the Earl of Abing- 
don as his equal. The earl whom he so considered was the son 
of the one who had espoused the Signora Collino, and Lady Eliz- 
abeth Bertie was another child of the same marriage. When 
Gallini the dancer, therefore, began to think of proposing for the 
hand of that lady, he was merely thinking of marrying the niece 
of an instrumental performer. Gallini did not think there was 
derogation in this ; but he did think, vain, foolish fellow that he 
was, that such a union would confer upon him the title of " my 
lord." 

Gallini was a gentleman, nevertheless, in his way — that is, both 
in manners and morals. Proud indeed he was, as a peacock, and 
ambitious as a " climbing-boy," desirous for ever of being at the 
top, as speedily as possible, of every branch of his profession. He 
was the " professor of dancing" in the Abingdon family, where his 
agreeable person, his ready wit, his amiability, and the modesty 
beneath which he hid a world of pretension, rendered him a general 
favorite. He was very soon the friend of the house ; and long 
before he had achieved that rank, he was the very particular friend 
of Lady Elizabeth Bertie. She loved her mother's soft Italian as 
Gallini spoke it ; and in short she loved the Italian also, language 
and speaker. Lady and Signor became one. 

When the match became publicly known the " did you evers ?" 
that reached from box to box and echoed along the passages of 
the opera-house were deafening. "A lady of quality marry a 
dancer!" Why not, when maids of honor were held by royal 
coachmen as being bad company for the said coachman's sons ? It 



SHAM KNIGHTS. 447 

was a more suitable match than that of a lady of quality with her 
father's footman. 

Gallini happened to be in one of the lobbies soon after his mar- 
riage, where it was being loudly discussed by some angry beauties. 
In the midst of their ridicule of the bridegroom he approached, 
and exclaimed, " Lustrissima, son io ! Excellent lady, I am the 
man!" "And what does the man call himself?" asked they with 
a giggle, and doubtless also with reference to the story of the 
bridegroom considering himself a lord by right of his marriage 
with a " lady" — " what does the man call himself?" " Eccelenza," 
replied Gallini with a modest bow, " I am Signor Giovanni Gal- 
lini, Esquire." In the midst of their laughter he turned upon his 
heel, and went away to dress in flesh-colored tights, short tunic, 
and spangles. 

The marriage was not at first an unhappy one. There were 
several children, but difficulties also increased much faster than 
the family. Xot pecuniary difficulties, for Gallini was a prudent 
man, but class difficulties. The signor found himself without a 
properly-defined position, or what is quite as uneasy probably in 
itself, he was above his proper position, without being able to exact 
the homage that he thought was due to him. The brother-in-law 
of the earl was in the eyes of his own wife, only the dancing-master 
of their children. Considering that the lady had condescended to 
be their mother, she might have carried the condescension a little 
farther, and paid more respect to the father. Dissension arose, 
and in a tour de mains family interferences rendered it incurable. 
The quarrel was embittered, a separation ensued, and after a tran- 
quil union of a few years, there were separate households, with 
common ill-will in both. 

He felt himself no longer a " lord," even by courtesy, but he re- 
solved to be what many lords have tried to be, in vain, or who 
ruined themselves by being, namely, proprietor and manager of 
the opera-house. This was in 1786, by which time he had real- 
ized a fortune by means of much industry, active heels, good looks, 
capital benefits, monopoly of teaching, prudence, temperance, and 
that economy, which extravagant people call parsimony. This 
fortune, or rather a portion of it, he risked in the opera-house — 
and lost it all, of course. He commenced his career with as much 



448 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

spirit as if he had only been the steward of another man's prop- 
erty ; and he made engagements in Italy with such generosity and 
patriotism, that the Pope having leisure for a while to turn his 
thoughts from divinity to dancing, became as delighted with Gallini 
as Pio Nono was with Fanny Cerito. We are bound to believe 
that his holiness was in a fit of infallible enthusiasm, when he 
dubbed Gallini, Knight of the Golden Spur. The latter returned 
to London and wrote himself down " Sir John." Cards were just 
come into fashion, to enable people to pay what were called 
" visites en blanc," and " Sir John Gallini," was to be seen in 
every house where the latter had friend or acquaintance. His 
portrait was in all the shops, with this chivalric legend beneath it, 
and there are yet to be seen old opera libretti with a frontispiece 
exhibiting to an admiring public the effigies of " Sir John Gallini." 

The public liked the sound, liked the man, and sanctioned the 
title, by constantly applying it to the individual, without any men- 
tal reserve. They had seen so many fools made knights that they 
were glad to see a spirited man make one of himself, by applica- 
tion of " Sir" to a papally-conferred title. The law, however, no 
more allowed it than it did that of the Romanist official who got 
presented at court as " Monsignore something," and whose presen- 
tation was cancelled as soon as the pleasant trick was discovered. 
Gallini, however, continued in the uninterrupted title until circum- 
stances brought him, as a witness, into the presence of Lord Ken- 
yon. When the Italian opera-dancer announced himself in the 
hearing of that judge as Sir John Gallini, the sight of the judge 
was what Americans call "a caution." His lordship looked as 
disgusted as Lord Eldon used to do, when he heard an Irish 
Romanist Bishop called by a territorial title. As far as the wrath 
of Lord Kenyon could do it, metaphorically, the great judge un- 
sir-John'd Sir John and chopped off his golden spurs in open 
court. Gallini was so good-natured and popular, that the public 
opinion would not confirm the opinion of the judge, and Sir John 
remained Sir John, in the popular mouth, throughout the kingdom. 

He was growing rich enough to buy up half the knights in the 
country. He built the music-rooms in Hanover Square, for Bach 
and Abel's subscription concerts. That is, he built the house; 
and let it out to any who required any portion of it, for any pur- 



SHAM KNIGHTS. 449 

pose of music, dancing, exhibiting, lecturing, or any other object 
having profit in view. He lodged rather than lived in it himself, 
lor he had reserved only a small cabinet for his own use, magnifi- 
cently sacrificing the rest of the mansion for the use of others, 
who paid him liberally for such use. Therewith, Sir John con- 
tinued his old profession as teacher as well as performer, manager 
at home as well as at the theatre; wary speculator, saving — 
avaricious, as they said who failed to cheat him of his money on 
faith of illusory promises, with an admirable eye for a bargain, 
and admirable care for the result of the bargain after he had 
concluded it. 

Everything went as merrily with him as it did with Polycrates, 
and ill-fortune and he seemed never to be acquainted, till one 
fatal night in 1789, the Opera House was burned to the ground, 
and the tide that had been so long flowing was now thought to be 
on the ebb. Sir John was too heroic to be downcast, and he did 
what many a hero would never even have thought of doing, nor, 
indeed, any wise man either. He put down thirty thousand 
pounds in hard cash toward the rebuilding of the opera-house, 
sent to Italy for the best architectural plans, left no means un- 
employed to erect a first rate theatre, and worked for that object 
with as much integrity as if the safety of the universe depended 
on the building of an opera-house in the Haymarket. What the 
public lost in one night was thus being made good to them by 
another. 

Meanwhile fashion was in a deplorable state of musical desti- 
tution. What was to become of London without an opera? 
How could the world, the infinitesimal London world, exist with- 
out its usual allowance of roulades and rigadoons ? Our knight 
was just the champion to come in beneficially at such an extrem- 
ity. He opened the little theatre in the Haymarket, and nobody 
went to it. Fashion turned up its nose in scorn, and kept away ; 
nay, it did worse, it acted ungratefully, and when some speculators 
established an opera at the Pantheon, Fashion led the way from 
the Haymarket, and a host of followers went in her train to 
Oxford street. "I will victoriously bring her back to her old 
house," said Sir John. The knight was gallant-hearted, but he 
did not know that he had other foes besides Fashion. 

29 



450 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

Sir John got into difficulties through law, lawyers, and false 
friends. He ruled as monarch at the opera-house, only to fall, 
with ruin. But he was not a man to be dismayed. His courage, 
zeal, and industry, were unbounded. He applied all these to 
good purpose, and his life was not only a useful bat an honorable 
and a prosperous one. It ended, after extending beyond the 
ordinary allotted time of man, calmly, yet somewhat suddenly; 
and " Sir John" Gallini died in his house in Hanover Square, 
leaving a large fortune, the memory of some eccentricities, and a 
good name and example, to his children. For my part, I can 
never enter the ancient concert-rooms in Hanover Square, without 
wishing a " Eequiescat !" to the knight of the Golden Spur, by 
whom the edifice was constructed. 

If Sir John Gallini, the dancer, could boast of having been 
knighted by a pope, Crescentini, the singer, could boast of having 
been knighted by an emperor. He received this honor at the 
hands of Napoleon I. He had previously been accustomed to 
compliments from, or in presence of, emperors. Thus, in 1804, 
at Vienna, he sang the Ombra adorata in the character of Romeo, 
with such exquisite grace and tenderness, that, on one occasion, 
when he had just finished this admirable lyric piece, the whole 
court forming part of his audience, two doves descended from 
the clouds, bearing him a crown of laurels, while on every side, 
garlands and flowers were flung upon the enchanted and enchant- 
ing warbler. The Austrian Emperor paid him more honor than 
his predecessor had ever paid to the Polish king who saved the 
empire from the Turks. The reputation of Crescentini gained 
for him an invitation, in 1809, to the imperial court of France. 
He played in company with Grassini, the two representing 
Romeo and Juliet. The characters had never been better repre- 
sented, and Talma, who was present, is said to have wept — an 
on dit which I do not credit, for there is not only nothing to cry 
at in the Italian characters, but Talma himself was in no wise 
addicted to indulgence in the melting mood, nor had he even 
common courtesy for his own actual Juliet. But the great actor 
was pleased, and the great emperor was delighted ; so much so, 
that he conferred an honor on Crescentini which he would never 
grant to Talma — made a chevalier of him. It is true that Talma 



SHAM KNIGHTS. 451 

desired to be made a knight of the Legion on Honor ; but the 
emperor would not place on the breast of a tragedian that cross 
which was the reward, then, only of men who had played their 
parts well, in real and bloody tragedies. The French tragedian 
declined the honor that was now accorded to Crescentini, whom 
the emperor summoned to his box, and decorated him with the 
insignia of the knight of the Iron Crown. The singing chevalier 
was in ecstacies. But the Juliet of the night had more cause to 
be so, for to her, Napoleon presented a draft on the Treasury, for 
20,000 francs. "It will be a nice little dower for one of my 
nieces," said the ever-generous Grassini to one of her friends, on 
the following day. Several years after this, a little niece, for 
whom she had hitherto done little, came to her, with a contralto 
voice, and a request for assistance. After hearing her sing, 
Grassini exclaimed, "You have no contralto voice, and need 
small help. You will have, with care, one of the finest mezzo- 
sopranos in the world. Your throat will be to you a mine of 
gold, and you may be both rich and renowned, my dear Giulietta 
Grisi." The niece has excelled the aunt. 

Knights of the shire are but sham knights now, and they origi- 
nally sprung from a revolutionary movement. Previous to the 
reign of Henry in. the people had no voice in the selection of 
their legislators. In that king's reign, however, the legislators 
were at loggerheads. Simon de Montfort, the aristocratic head 
of a popular party, was opposed to the king ; and the great earl 
and his friends being fearful of being outvoted in the next parlia- 
ment, succeeded in procuring the issue of a writ in the name of 
the king, who was then their prisoner, directing the sheriffs of 
each county to send two knights, and the authorities in cities and 
boroughs to send citizens and burgesses, to represent them in par- 
liament. This was a fundamental change of a long-established 
usage. It was, in fact, a revolution ; and the foundation at least 
of that form of a constitution on which our present constitutional 
substantiality has been erected. 

When the king became emancipated, however, although he con- 
tinued to summon " barons and great men," he never during his 
reign issued a writ for the election of knights of the shire. His 
son, Edward I., summoned the greater and lesser barons, or his 



452 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

tenants in chief, according to the old usage. This he did during, 
at least, seven years of his reign. The last were not barons, but 
they were summoned as " barons' peers, and all these attended in 
their own persons," and not as representatives of the people. In 
the reign of John, indeed, the people's voice had been heard, but 
it may be stated generally, that until the forty-ninth of Henry III., 
the constituent parts of the great council of the nation was com- 
posed solely of the archbishops and bishops, the earls, barons, and 
tenants in capite. 

It is a singular fact that, in the early elections, the knights of 
the shire were elected by universal suffrage ; and so, indeed, they 
are now, in a certain way, as I shall explain, after citing the fol- 
lowing passage from Hallam's State of Europe during the Middle 
Ages : " Whoever may have been the original voters for county 
representatives, the first statute that regulates their election, so far 
from limiting the privilege to tenants in capite, appears to place it 
upon a very large and democratical foundation. For (as I rather 
conceive, though not without much hesitation) not only all free- 
holders, but all persons whatever present at the county court, were 
declared, or rendered, capable of voting for the knight of their 
shire. Such at least seems to be the inference from the expres- 
sions of 7 Henry IV., c. 15, ' all who are there present, as well suitors 
duly summoned for that cause, as others.' And this acquires some 
degree of confirmation from the later statute 8 Henry VI., c. 7, 
which, reciting that 'elections of knights of shires have now, of 
late, been made by very great, outrageous, and excessive number 
of people dwelling within the same counties, of the which most 
were people of small substance and of no value,' confines the elec- 
tive franchise to freeholders of lands or tenements to the value of 
forty shillings." 

The original summons to freeholders was, without doubt, by 
general proclamation, so that, as Mr. Hallam remarks, " it is not 
easy to see what difference there could be between summoned and 
unsummoned suitors. And if the words are supposed to glance at 
the private summonses to a few friends, by means of which the 
sheriffs were accustomed to procure a clandestine election, one can 
hardly imagine that such persons would be styled ' duly summoned.' 
It is not unlikely, however," adds Mr. Hallam, " that these large 



SHAM KNIGHTS. 453 

expressions were inadvertently used, and that they led to that in- 
undation of voters without property which rendered the subsequent 
act of Henry VI. necessary. That of Henry IV. had itself been 
occasioned by an opposite evil, the close election of knights by a 
few persons in the name of the county." 

The same writer proceeds to observe that the consequence of 
the statute of Henry IV. was not to let in too many voters, or to 
render election tumultuous in the largest of English counties, 
whatever it might be in others. Prynne, it appears, published 
some singular indentures for the county of York, proceeding from 
the sheriffs, during the intervals between the acts of the fourth 
and sixth Henry. These " are selected by a few persons calling 
themselves the attorneys of some peers and ladies, who, as far as 
it appears, had solely returned the knights of that shire. What 
degree of weight," says Mr. Hallam, "these anomalous returns 
ought to possess, I leave to the reader." 

I have said that the universal suffrage system in the election of 
these knights (and indeed of others) as far as it can be carried 
out, in allowing all persons present to have a voice, is still strictly 
in force. Appeal is made to the popular assembly as to the choice 
of a candidate. The decision is duly announced by the highest 
authority present, and then the rejected candidate may, if he thinks 
proper, appeal from the people present to those who are legally 
qualified to vote. The first ceremony is now a very unnecessary 
one, but it is, without doubt, the relic of a time when observation 
of it bore therewith a serious meaning. 

From parliament to the university is no very wide step. Sir 
Hugh Evans and Sir Oliver Martext were individuals who, with 
their titles, are very familiar to the most of us. The knightly 
title thus given to clergymen, was not so much by way of courtesy, 
as for the sake of distinction. It was " worn" by Bachelors of 
Arts, otherwise " Domini," to distinguish them from the Masters 
of Arts, or " Magistri." Properly speaking, the title was a local 
one, and ought not to have been used beyond the bounds of the 
University: but as now-a-days with the case of "captains" of 
packet-boats, they are also captains at home ; so, in old times, the 
" Sir" of the University was Sir Something Somebody, everywhere. 

We laugh at the French for so often describing our knights only 



454 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

by their surnames, as " Sir Jones." This, however, is the old 
English form as it was used at Cambridge. The Cambridge " Sirs" 
were addressed by Christian and surname in their livings, and in 
documents connected therewith. This practice continued till the 
title itself was abandoned some time after the Reformation. The 
old custom was occasionally revived by the elderly stagers, much 
to the astonishment of younger hearers. Thus when Bishop 
Mawson of Llandaff was on one occasion at court, he encountered 
there a reverend Bachelor of Arts, Fellow of Bene't College, and 
subsequently Dean of Salisbury. His name was Greene. The 
bishop, as soon as he saw the " bachelor" enter the drawing-room, 
accosted him loudly in this manner: "How do you do, Sir 
Greene? When did you leave college, Sir Greene?" Mr. 
Greene observing the astonishment of those around him, took 
upon himself to explain that the bishop was only using an ob- 
solete formula of bygone times. The most recent courtesy title 
that I can remember, was one given to a blind beggar who was 
very well known in the vicinity of Trinity College, Dublin, where, 
indeed, he had been a student some five-and-thirty years ago. 
He was invariably styled " Domine John," and he could return a 
suitable answer in good Latin, to the query, Quo modo vales'? — 
or to any other query. 

" Vale !" is indeed what I ought to utter to the courteous reader ; 
nor will I detain him longer — supposing he has kindly borne with 
me thus far — than with one brief chapter more, which, being mis- 
cellaneous, I may not inaptly call " Pieces of Armor." 



PIECES OF ARMOR. 455 



PIECES OF ARMOR. 

The word Pieces reminds me of a curious theatrical illustration 
of Macedonian chivalry. When Barry used to play Alexander 
the Great, he made a grand spectacle of his chariot entry. But 
it was highly absurd, nevertheless. When he descended from the 
vehicle, his attendant knights, bareheaded and unarmed, placed 
their hands upon it, and in an instant it went to pieces, like a 
trick in a pantomime, and left in every warrior's possession, 
swords, javelins, shields, and helmets, supplied by the spokes of 
the wheels, the poles, the body of the car and its ornaments. This 
feat was very highly applauded by our intellectual sires. 

This act, however, was hardly more unnatural than the sayings 
of some real chevaliers, particularly those of Spain. 

Among the Spanish Rhodomontades chronicled by Brantome, 
we find none that have not reference to personal valor. There 
is the choleric swordsman who walks the street without his weap- 
on, for the good reason that his hand is so ready to fly to his 
sword, if the wind but blow on him too roughly, he is never able 
to walk out armed without taking two or three lives. " I will 
hoist you so high," says another Spanish cavalier to his antago- 
nist, " that you will die before you can reach the earth again." It 
was a fellow of the same kidney who used not only to decapitate 
dozens of Moorish heads every morning, but was wont afterward 
to fling them so high into the air, that they were half-devoured by 
flies before they came down again. Another, boasting of his feats 
in a naval battle, quietly remarked, that making a thrust down- 
ward with his sword, it passed through the sea, penetrated the 
infernal region, and sliced off a portion of the moustache of Pluto ! 
" If that man be a friend of yours," said a cavalier, to a compan- 
ion, referring 1 at the same time to a swordsman with whom the 



456 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIK DAYS. 

cavalier had had angry words, " pray for his soul, for he has quar- 
relled with me." The self-complacency also of the following is 
not amiss. A Spanish captain in Paris, saw the haughty cheva- 
lier d'Ambres pass by him. " Is he," said the Spaniard, u as val- 
iant as he is proud ?" The reply was in the affirmative. " Then," 
remarked the Iberian, " he is almost as. good a man as myself." 
We hear of another, less gallant, perhaps, than brave, who made 
it a great favor to ladies when he put off a combat at their request, 
and passed a pleasant hour with them, in place of knocking out 
brains upon the field. It was a knight of similar notions who cud- 
gelled his page for boasting of the knight's valor. " If thou dost 
such foolish things, Sir Knave," said the doughty gentleman, " the 
whole female sex will perish of love for me, and I shall have no 
leisure left to take towns and rout armies." This was a full-devel- 
oped knight. It was probably his youthful squire who remarked, 
when some one expressed surprise that one so young had mus- 
taches of such unusual length. "They sprung up," said the 
young soldier, " under the smoke of cannon ; they grew thus quick- 
ly under the same influences." 

Some of the old Spanish cavaliers used to maintain that their 
very beauty dazzled their enemies. However this may have 
been, it is a fact that the beauty of Galeozo Maria, Duke of Milan, 
was sufficiently striking to save him for a while, against the dag- 
gers of conspirators. One of these, named Lampugnano, longed 
to slay him, but did not dare. He was, nevertheless, resolved ; 
and he employed a singular means for giving himself courage. 
He procured a faithful portrait of the handsome duke, and every 
time he passed it, he looked steadfastly at the brilliant eyes and 
graceful features, and then plunged his dagger into the canvass. 
He continued this practice until he found himself enabled to look 
the living duke in the face without being dazzled by his beauty ; 
and this done, he dealt his blow steadily, and destroyed his great 
and graceful foe. 

It has often been asserted that there have been few cavaliers 
who have carried on war with more indifference and cruelty than 
the Spanish knights. But war in all times and in all ages has in- 
duced the first, at least, if not the last. I may cite among what 
may be called the more recent instances, one that would hardly 



PIECES OF ARMOR. 457 

have occurred, even at Sebastopol. It is in reference to Schom- 
berg's army at Dimdalk. " The survivors," says Leland, " used the 
bodies of their dead comrades for seats or shelter ; and when these 
were carried to interment, murmured at being deprived of their 
conveniences." "While touching upon Irish matters, I will avail 
myself of the opportunity to notice that Irish knights were some- 
times called " iron knee." u eagle knee," and " black knee," from 
the armor which was especially needed for that part of the body, 
the Irish with their dreadful battle-axes making the sorest stroke 
on the thigh of the horseman. The Irish appellation of the White 
Knight, was given to the heir of a family wherein gray hairs were 
hereditary. The Irish knights, it may be observed, were gener- 
ally more religious than the Spanish. The latter were too ready 
to ascribe every success to their own might, and not to a greater 
hand. Even in the case of St. Lawrence, calmly roasting to death 
on his gridiron, the proud Spaniards would not have this patience 
ascribed to the grace of God, but only to the true Spanish valor. 
While speaking of the burning of St. Lawrence, I will add that 
St. Pierre quotes Plutarch in stating, that when the Roman burn- 
ers had to reduce to ashes the bodies of several knights and ladies, 
they used to place one female body among eight or ten males, 
fancying that with this amalgamation they would burn better. 
The author of the " Harmonies of Nature" makes upon this the 
truly characteristic comment, that the Roman fashion was founded 
on the notion, that " the fire of love still burned within us after 
death." 

Reverting, for a moment, to the Spaniards, I may notice a 
fashion among them which is worth mentioning. When a Spanish 
cavalier entered the presence of a Spanish queen, accompanied by 
his lady, he did not unbonnet to his sovereign. He was supposed 
to be so engrossed by his mistress as to forget even the courtesies 
of loyalty. ■ 

Brantome, on the other hand, notices kingly courtesy toward a 
subject. When describing the battle-acts of the famous M. de 
Thorannes, he states that the King in acknowledgment that the 
battle of Rentz had been gained chiefly through his courage, took 
the collar of his own order from his neck, and placed it on that of 
the gallant soldier. This was a most unusual act, according to 



458 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

the showing of Brantome, but probably not the first time of a sim- 
ilar occurrence. The author just named complains in piteous 
terms that, in his time and previously, the honors of chivalry had 
been bestowed for anything but knightly deeds. They were gained 
by favor, influence, or money. Some set their wives to exert their 
fascination oyer the Christian sovereign, and purchase the honor 
at any cost. " M. de Chateaubriand gave a house and an estate for 
the order of St. Michael. Ultimately, it was conferred on single 
captains of infantry, to the great disgust of the better-born gentle- 
men who had paid dearly for the honor. Brantome declares that 
he knew many who had never been half a dozen leagues from 
their houses, who wore the insignia of the order, and who talked 
of the taking of Loches, as if they had really been present. He 
angrily adds, that even lawyers were made knights, stripping 
themselves of their gowns, and clapping swords on their thighs. 
He appears especially annoyed that the celebrated Montaigne 
should have followed a similar example: and he adds with a 
malicious exultation, that the sword did not become him half so 
well as the pen. 

One French Marquis was persecuted by his neighbors to get 
orders for them, as if they were applying for orders for the theatre. 
He obtained them with such facility, that he even made a knight 
of his house-steward, and forced the poor man to go to market in 
his collar, to the infinite wounding of his modesty. It was, how- 
ever, one rule of the order that the collar should never, under any 
pretence whatever, be taken from the neck. The Court had very 
unsavory names for these mushroom-knights ; and Brantome gives 
us some idea of the aristocratic feeling when he recounts, with a 
horror he does not seek to disguise, that the order was sold to an 
old Huguenot gentleman, for the small sum of five hundred crowns. 
A cheap bargain for the new knight, seeing that membership in 
the order carried with it exemption from taxation. Luckily for 
the Huguenot he died just in time to save himself from being dis- 
graced. Some gentlemanly ruffians had agreed to attack this 
"homme de peu," as Brantome calls him, to pull the order from 
his neck, to give him a cudgelling, and to threaten him with an- 
other, whenever he dared to wear the knightly insignia. 

Brantome wonders the more at what he calls the abuse of the 



PIECES OF ARMOR. 459 

order as it had been instituted by Louis XL, on the ground that 
the old order of the Star founded by King John, in memory of 
the star which guided the Kings to the Cradle of Divinity, had 
become so common, that the silver star of the order was to be 
seen in the hat and on the mantle of half the men in France. 
Louis XL, in abolishing the order, conferred its insignia as an or- 
nament of dress, upon the Chevaliers de Guet, or gentlemen of 
the watch, who looked to the safety of Paris when the stars were 
shining, or that it was the hour for them to do so. It was an un- 
derstood thing with all these orders that if a knight went into the 
service of an enemy to the sovereign head of the order, the knight 
was bound to divest himself of the insignia and transmit the same 
directly to the King. 

Before the dignity of the order was humbled, the members took 
pride in displaying it even in battle ; although they were put to 
high ransom, if captured. Some prudent knights, of as much dis- 
cretion as valor, would occasionally conceal the insignia before 
going into fight ; but they were mercilessly ridiculed, when the 
absence of the decoration testified to the presence of their discre- 
tion. In the earlier years of its formation, a man could with more 
facility obtain a nomination to be captain of the body-guard than 
the collar of the order of St. Michael. Louis XL himself showed 
a wise reluctance to making the order common, and although he 
fixed the number of knights at six-and-thirty, he would only, at 
first, appoint fifteen. Under succeeding kings the order swelled to 
limitless numbers, until at last, no one would accept it, even when 
forced upon them. One great personage, indeed, sought and ob- 
tained it. He was severely rallied for his bad ambition ; but as 
he remarked, the emblems of the order would look well, engraved 
upon his plate, and the embroidered mantle would make an admi- 
rable covering for his mule. 

This sort of satire upon chivalry reminds me that a knight could 
unknight himself, when so inclined. An instance occurs in a case 
connected with Jeanne Dare. The chevaliers of the Dauphin's 
army had no belief in the inspiration of the Maid of Orleans, until 
success crowned her early efforts. The female knight, if one may 
so speak, on the other hand, had no measure whatever of respect, 
either for knight or friar, who appeared to doubt her heavenly 



460 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

mission. I may just notice, by the way, that a " board" of seven 
theologians assembled to consider her claims, and examine the 
maiden herself. One of the members, a "brother Seguin," a 
Limousin, who spoke with the strong and disagreeable accent of 
his birthplace, asked Jeanne in what sort of idiom she had been 
addressed by the divine voice, by which she professed to be guided : 
" In a much better idiom than you use yourself," answered the 
pert young lady, " or I should have put no trust in it." Here, by 
the way, we have, perhaps, the origin of the old story of the stam- 
mering gentleman who asked the boy if his m — m — magpie could 
speak ? " Better than you," said the boy, " or I would wring his 
neck off." But to resume. Jeanne was quite as nonchalante to 
the knights, as she was flippant to the friars. She expressly ex- 
hibits this characteristic, in the first council held in her presence 
within Orleans, when she urged immediate offensive measures, 
contrary to the opinion of the knights themselves. One of the 
latter, the Sire de Gamache, was so chafed by the pertinacity of 
the Pucelle, that, at last, springing to his feet, he exclaimed : — 
" Since noble princes listen for a moment to the nonsense of a low- 
bred hussy like this, rather than to the arguments of a chevalier 
such as I am, I will not trouble myself to give any more opinions. 
In proper time and place, my good sword will speak, and per- 
chance I may prevail; but the king and my honor so will it. 
Henceforward, I furl and pull down my banner ; from this moment 
I am only a simple 'squire ; but I would much rather have a noble 
man for master, than serve under a wench who, perhaps, has been 
a — one really does not know what!" and with these words, he 
rolled up his banner, placed the same in the hands of Dunois, and 
walked out of the tent, not Sir John de Gamache, but plain John 
Gamache, Esquire. 

A curious result followed. The first attack on the bastion of 
Tourelles failed, and Jeanne was slightly wounded and unhorsed. 
Gamache was near, and he dismounted and offered her his steed. ' 
" Jump up," cried the good fellow, " you are a gallant lass, and I 
was wrong in calling you ugly names. I will serve and obey you 
right willingly." "And you," said Jeanne, "are as hearty a 
knight as ever thwacked men or helped a maid." And so were 
they reconciled, and remained good friends to the end; — which 
was not long in coming. 



PIECES OF ARMOR. 461 

Knights, irregularly made so, were unknighted with little cere- 
mony. Although each duly dubbed knight could confer the same 
honor on any deserving such distinction, it was necessary that the 
individual about to be so honored should be a gentleman. In 
France, if this rule was infringed, the unlucky knight had his 
spurs hacked off, on a dunghill. Occasionally the unknighted 
person was fined. It may be observed, however, that the king 
might make a knight of a villain, if the sovereign were so minded. 
That is, a king could raise any of his own subjects to the rank, if 
he thought proper. Not so with sovereigns and persons not their 
subjects. The Emperor Sigismund, for instance, when visiting 
Paris, in 1415, knighted a person who was below the rank of 
gentleman. The French people were indignant at this, as an act 
of sovereignty in another monarch's dominions. If this chevalier 
was not unknighted, the reason, probably, was that the Emperor 
might not be offended. It is said, that in Naples it has never 
been necessary for a man to be noble, a gentleman in fact, in order 
to be a knight. Tins may readily be credited. In Naples the 
fact of a man being a brute beast does not incapacitate him from 
exercising the office even of a king. 

After all, there appears to have been some uncertainty in the 
observance of the law on the subject. In England the custom 
which allowed knights to dub other knights, very soon fell into 
disuse, so that there are fewer examples of unknighting in this 
country than in France, where the custom prevailed down to the 
middle of the sixteenth century ; and its abuses, of course, ren- 
dered the unmaking of illegally constituted knights, if not common, 
at least an occasional occurrence. Henry III., as I have said in 
another page, summoned tenants in capite to receive knighthood 
from himself, and authorized tenants of mesne lords to receive the 
honor from whom they pleased. But there must have been con- 
siderable disrating of these last distinguished persons, or such an 
abuse of creation, so to speak, that the privilege was stopped, 
except by special permission of the king. Some places, in 
France, however, declared that they held a prescriptive right 
for burgesses to receive knighthood at the hands of noblemen, 
without the royal permission. Hallam, quoting Villaret, says 
that burgesses, in the great commercial towns, were considered as 



462 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

of a superior class to the roturiers, and possessed a kind of demi- 
nobility. 

Ridiculous as modern knights, whether of town or country, 
have been made upon the stage, it is indisputable that in some 
cases the ridicule has not been what painters call " loaded," and 
the reality was in itself a caricature. I have read somewhere of 
one city gentleman, who was knighted during his shrievalty, and 
who forthwith emancipated himself a little from business, and 
aired his chivalrous " sir" in gay company. He was once, how- 
ever, sorely puzzled on receiving a note of invitation from a lady 
whose soirees were the especial delight of her guests, and whose 
note ended with the initials, so absurdly placed at the termination 
of an invitation in English. R. S. V. P., "reponse, s'il vous 
plait." The newly-coined knight, after allusions to the pressure 
of business, accepted the hospitality offered him through the note, 
remarking at the same time, that " all work and no play made 
Jack a dull boy," and that he knew nothing more to his taste, after 
a long day's application, than what her ladyship's note appeared to 
present to him in the initials at its foot ; namely, a Regular Small 
Vist Party. If this anecdote be not apocryphal, I suspect that 
the knight's remark may have sprung less from ignorance than 
humor, and that his reading of the initials was meant as a censure 
upon an absurd fashion. 

While speaking of city knights at home, and their humor, I 
will avail myself of the opportunity to give an instance of wit in 
a poor chevalier of the city of Paris, whose whole wealth consist- 
ed of a few unproductive acres near the capital, and whose son 
had just married a wealthy heiress of very low degree. u II fait 
bien," said the old knight, " il fume mes terres !" 

This was hardly courteous ; but elevated courtesy was never 
wanting among true knights, in the very rudest of times. 

Strange contrasts of feeling were sometimes exhibited. Thus, 
when the English were besieging Orleans, they grew suddenly 
tired of their bloody work, on Christmas-day, and asked for a 
truce while they ate their pudding. The request was not only 
readily granted, but the French knights, hearing that the day was 
dull in the English camp, obtained the permission of the bastard 
Dunois, to send over some musicians to enliven the melancholy 



PIECES OF ARMOR. 463 

leaguers. The band played lustily during the whole period of the 
truce, but the last notes had scarcely ceased, and the " Godons" 
as Jeanne Dare rather corruptively called our great sires, who 
were too much addicted to swearing, had hardly ceased uttering 
their thanks for the musical entertainment, when their cannonade 
was renewed by the besiegers with such vigor, that the French 
knights swore — harmony had never before been paid in such 
hard coin. 

There was little ill-feeling consequent upon this. The pages 
in either army were allowed to amuse themselves by slaying each 
other in a two days* duel, presided over by the respective generals- 
in-chief. This was chivalrous proof that neither party bore malice, 
and they beat out each other's brains on the occasion, in testimony 
of universal good-will, with as much delighted feeling as if they 
had all been Irishmen. A further proof of absence of individual 
rancor may be seen in the fact, that Suffolk sent a gift of pigs, 
dates, and raisins, for the dessert of Dunois ; and the latter ac- 
knowledged the present by forwarding to the English general some 
fur for his robe — Suffolk having complained bitterly of the cold 
of that memorable February, 1429. 

This reminds me of a similar interchange of courtesy between 
French and English antagonists, in later times. When brave 
Elliot was defending Gibraltar from gallant Crillon, the former, 
who never ate meat, suffered greatly (as did his scurvy-stricken 
men) from a scarcity of vegetables. Crillion had more than he 
wanted, and he sent of his superabundance, most liberally, to the 
foe whom he respected. A whole cart-load of carrots and compli- 
ments made general and garrison glad, and Elliot was as profuse 
in his gratitude as he was bound to be. It may be remembered 
that similar exchanges of courtesy and creature-comforts took 
place at Sebastopol. Sir Edmund Lyons sent Admiral Na- 
chimoff a fat buck, a gift which the large-minded hero of the 
Sinope butchery repaid by a hard Dutch cheese. It may be 
said too that the buck would have been more appropriately 
sent to the half-starved English heroes who were rotting in the 
trenches. 

There were some other naval knights of old, touching whom I 
may here say a word. 



464 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

The history of the sea-kings or sea-knights, whose noble voca- 
tion it was to descend from the north with little but ballast in the 
holds of their vessels, and to return thither heavily laden with 
plunder and glory, is tolerably well known to the majority of 
readers. The story of the Flemish pirates, who, nearly eight 
centuries ago, carried terror to, and brought spoil from the Mediter- 
ranean, is far less familinr. This story is well illustrated in the 
" Biographie des hommes remarquables de la Flandres Occiden- 
tale," of whom the authors are M. Octave Delepierre, the accom- 
plished Belgian consul in this country, and Mr. Carton. 

The period is a warm June evening of the year 1097. Off the 
coast of Cilicia, two large vessels, belonging to the Emperor 
Alexis Comnenus, and manned by Constantinopolitan Greeks, 
were surrounded and attacked by ten fast-sailing but small vessels, 
belonging to the dreaded " Greek Pirates," whose name alone 
brought terror with the sound. On the prow of each light bark 
was a rudely sculptured figure of a lion ; from the summit of the 
tall mast was displayed a green pennant, which was never hauled 
down, for the good reason that the pirates never attacked but where 
success seemed certain ; and if defeat menaced them they could 
easily find safety in flight 

There was scarcely a place on the coast which they had not, 
for ten years past, visited ; and many merchants purchased ex- 
emption from attack by paying a species of very liberal black 
mail. It was beneath the dignity of an emperor to buy safety 
from piratical rovers, and they had little respect for his vessels, in 
consequence. 

M. Delepierre informs us that these Flemish pirates had been, 
originally, merchants, but that they thought it more profitable to 
steal than to barter ; and found " skimming the seas," as the phrase 
went, far more lucrative than living by the dull precepts of trade. 
Their three principal chiefs were Zegher of Bruges, Gheraert of 
Courtrai, and Wimer (whose name still lives in Wimereux) of 
Boulogne. The force they had under them amounted to four 
hundred intrepid men, who were at once sailors and soldiers, and 
who are described as being so skilful that they could with one 
hand steer the ship, and with the other wield the boarding-hatch- 
et. It will be seen that our Laureate's exhortation to knavish 



PIECES OF ARMOR. 465 

tradesmen to lay down their weights and their measures, and to 
mend their ways by taking to the vocation of arms, had here a 
practical illustration. In the present case, M. Delepierre suggests 
that the pirates were, probably, not less honest men than the 
Greeks. The latter were ostensibly on their way to succor the 
Crusaders, but Alexis was a double dealer, and occasionally de- 
spatched forces against the infidel, which forces turned aside to as- 
sault those Christian neighbors of his, who were too powerful to 
be pleasant in such a vicinity, and to get rid of whom was to be 
devoutly desired, and, at any cost, accomplished. The foreign 
policy of Alexis was as villanously void of principle as that 
of any government under a more advanced period of Christian 
civilization. 

The Greek crews had been summoned to surrender. Gheraert 
of Courtrai had called to them to that effect through his leathern 
speaking-trumpet. He probably knew little of Greek, and the 
Orientals could not have comprehended his Flemish. We may 
conclude that his summons was in a macaronic sort of style ; in 
which two languages were used to convey one idea. The Hellenes 
replied to it, however it may have sounded, by hurling at the 
Flemings a very hurricane of stones. 

The stout men from Flanders were not long in answering in 
their turn. " They put into play," says M. Delepierre, " their 
mechanical slings. These were large baskets full of stones 
fastened to the end of an elevated balance, the motion of which 
flung them to some distance. They had other means of destruc- 
tion, in enormous engines, which hurled beams covered with iron, 
and monster arrows wrapped in flaming rosin. With scythe-blades 
attached to long poles, they severed the ropes and destroyed the 
sails, and then flinging out their grapnels they made off with 
their prize." 

To this point the present battle had not yet come. It had 
lasted an hour, the Greeks had suffered most by the means of 
attack above noticed ; and they had inflicted but trifling injury, 
comparatively, upon the men of the green pennant. They re- 
fused, however, to surrender, but prepared to fly. Wimer saw 
the preparatory movement, and, in a loud voice, exclaimed : — " A 
dozen divers !" 

30 



466 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

Twelve men, quitting their posts, leaped over the side of the 
boat, carrying enormous tarieres (augers) with them. They disap- 
peared beneath the waves ; appeared for a moment or two again 
above the surface, in order to draw breath ; once more plunged 
downward ; and, finally, at the end of ten minutes, climbed again 
into their small vessel, exclaiming, " Master, it is done !" 

The twelve divers had established twelve formidable leaks in 
the larger of the two Greek vessels, and as it began to sink, the 
crew agreed to surrender. The Green Pirates seized all that 
was on board that and the other ship. In the latter, stripped of 
everything of value, they allowed the two Greek crews to sail 
away ; and then proceeded toward the coast with their booty, con- 
sisting of rich stuffs, provisions and arms. There was far more 
than they needed for their own wants ; and so, for the nonce, they 
turned traders again. They sold at a good price what they had 
unscrupulously stolen, and the profits realized by the Flemish ro- 
vers were enough to make all honest, but poor traders, desire to 
turn corsairs. 

Zegher ascended the Cydnus, in order to pay a professional 
visit to Tarsis, and was not a little surprised, on approaching the 
city, to see formidable preparations made to resist him. On draw- 
ing closer, however, the pirate-leader found that Tarsis was in pos- 
session of the army of Flemish crusaders under the great Count 
Baldwin ; and each party welcomed the other with joyous shouts 
of " Long live Flanders !" " Long live the Lion !" The arrival 
of the fleet was of the greatest advantage to the Flemings, 
who, though they had suffered less than the French, Italian, 
and German legions, by whom they had been preceded, and 
had been progressively triumphing since they had landed, need- 
ed succors both of men and material, and lo ! here were the 
Green Pirates ready to furnish both, for a consideration. There 
was abundance of feasting that night, and a very heavy sermon in 
the morning. 

Baldwin was himself the preacher. His style was a mixture 
of exhorting with the threatening ; and he was so little compli- 
mentary as to tell the Green pirates that they were nothing better 
than brigands, and were undoubtedly on their way to the devil. 
He added that he would have treated them as people of such a 



PIECES OF ARMOR. 467 

character, going such a way, only that they were his countrymen. 
And then he wept at the very thought of their present demerits, 
and their possible destiny. This practice of weeping was inherit- 
ed by knights from the old Greek heroes, and a chevalier in com- 
plete steel might shed tears till his suit was rusty, without the 
slightest shame. The exhortation continued without appearing to 
make any sensible impression upon the rovers. Baldwin, how- 
ever, pointed his address at the end, with an observation that if 
they would join him in his career of arms, he would give them 
lands that should make lords of the whole of them. Upon this 
observation the Green Pirates, with a little modest allusion to their 
unworthiness, declared that they were eager, one and all, to turn 
crusaders. 

Each man attached a small green cross, in cloth, to the top 
of his sleeve ; and joyfully followed Baldwin to the field. The 
count was no more able to keep his word than a recruiting 
sergeant who promises a recruit that he shall be made a field- 
marshal. Nor was he to blame, for the greater part of his new 
allies perished ; but enough were left to make a score of very 
doughty knights. 

Admirable sailors were the Northmen, especially the Anglo- 
NormanSj whether with respect to manoeuvring or courage. 
" Close quarters" formed the condition on which they liked to be 
with an enemy. " Grapple and board" was their system as soon 
as they had created a little confusion among the enemy with 
their cross-bows and slings. The "mariners" in those days 
fought in armor, with heavy swords, spears, and battle-axes. 
They were well furnished too with bags of quick-lime, the 
contents of which they flung into the eyes of their adversaries, 
when they could get to windward of them, an end which they 
always had in view. 

The first regular naval battle fought between the English and 
the French was conducted by the former after the fashion above 
mentioned. It was during the reign of Henry III., when Louis 
of France, by the destruction of his army at " the fair of Lincoln," 
was shut up in London, and depended on the exertions of his 
wife, Blanche of Castile, for his release. Blanche sent eighty 
large ships, besides many smaller vessels, from Calais, under a 



468 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIK DAYS. 

piratical commander, the celebrated Eustace Le Moine. Hubert 
de Burgh had only forty vessels wherewith to proceed against this 
overwhelming force ; and on board of these the English knights 
proceeded, under protest and with a world of grumbling, at being 
compelled to fight on the waters when they had no sea-legs, and 
were accustomed to no battles but those on land. No heed was 
taken of protest or grumbling; the forty vessels were loosened 
from their moorings, and away went the reluctant but strong- 
boned land sailors, all in shirts of mail in place of Guernsey jack- 
ets, to contend for the first time with a French fleet. The English 
ships contrived to get between Calais and the enemy's vessels, and 
fell upon the latter in their rear. The English bowmen handled 
their favorite weapons with a deadly dexterity ; and as soon as 
their vessels were made fast to those of the French, out flew the 
quick-lime, flung by the English, and carried by the wind into the 
faces of the French. While these were stamping with pain, 
screwing their eyes up to look through the lime-dust, or turning 
their backs to avoid it, the English boarders made a rush, cut 
down men, hacked away the rigging, and so utterly defeated the 
French, unaccustomed to this sort of fighting, that of the great 
French fleet only fifteen vessels escaped. The number of Gallic 
knights and inferior officers captured was very large. As for 
Eustace le Moine, he had slunk below to avoid the lime-powder 
and battle-axes. He was seized by Eichard Fitzroy, King John's 
illegitimate son. Fitzroy refused to give the recreant quarter, but 
hewed off his head on the taffrail, and sent it from town to town 
through England as a pleasant exhibition. 

Errant knights in quest of adventure, and anxious to secure re- 
nown, less frequently visited England than other countries. They 
appear to have had a mortal dislike of the sea. This dislike was 
common to the bravest and greatest among them. I may cite, as 
an instance, the case of the Duke of Orleans and his cavaliers, 
captured at Agincourt, and brought over to England, from Calais 
to Dover, by the gallant and lucky Henry. The latter walked 
the deck during a heavy ground swell, with as much enjoyment as 
though he had been to the matter born. The French prince and 
his knights, on the other hand, were as ignorant of the sea and as 
uneasy upon it as a modern English Lord of the Admiralty. They 



PIECES OP ARMOR. 469 

suffered horribly, and one and all declared that they would rather 
be daily exposed to the peril of battle, than cross the straits of 
Dover once a month. 

Nevertheless, stray knights did occasionally brave the dangers 
of the deep, and step ashore on the coast of Kent with a challenge 
to all comers of equal degree. We have an instance of this sort 
of adventurer in Jacques de Lelaing, whose story is told in this 
volume. We hear of another in the nameless knight of Aragon, 
who in the reign of Henry V. set all London and many a provin- 
cial baronial hall in commotion by his published invitation to all 
knights of the same rank as himself, to come and give him a taste 
of their quality in a bout at two-edged sword, axe, and dagger. 

The challenge was promptly accepted by stout Sir Robert Cary. 
Sir Robert was a poor knight, with nothing to lose, for his sire 
had lost all he possessed before Sir Robert's time, by being faith- 
ful to poor Richard II., a virtue, for the exercise of which he was 
punished by forfeiture of his estates, decreed against him by Henry 
IV. The disinherited knight, therefore, had a chance of winning 
land as well as honor, should he subdue the arrogant Aragonese. 
The two met in the then fashionable district of Smithfield, and the 
Devonshire swordsman, after a bloody and long-enduring fight, so 
thoroughly vanquished the Spaniard, that the king, who delighted 
in such encounters, and who was especially glad when victory was 
won by the side he most favored, not only restored to Sir Robert 
the forfeited paternal estates, but he also authorized him to wear 
the arms of the much-bruised knight from beyond sea. 

At a later period knightly estates went in the service of another 
king. Sir Henry Cary risked life and property in the cause of 
Charles I., and while he preserved the first, he was deprived of 
nearly all the latter. The head of the family, no longer a knight, 
if I remember rightly, was residing at Torr Bay, when the Old 
Chevalier was about to attempt to regain the three crowns which, 
according to no less than a French archiepiscopal authority, 
James II. had been simple enough to lose for one mass. At this 
period, the English king that would be, sent the Duke of Ormond 
to the head of the Cary family, and not only conveyed to him an 
assurance that his services to the Stuarts had not been forgotten ; 
but, by way of guarantee that future, and perhaps more than 



470 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS 

knightly honors should be heaped upon him, in case of victory de- 
claring for the Stuart cause, the chevalier sent him the portraits 
of James II., and of that monarch's wife, Mary of Modena. Sim- 
ilar portraits are to be found among the cherished treasures of 
many English families ; and these are supposed to have been origi- 
nally distributed among various families, as pledges from the giver, 
that for swords raised, money lost, or blood shed in the cause of 
the Stuarts, knighthood and honors more substantial should follow 
as soon as " the king" should " get his own again." 

To revert to Charles I., it may be added that he was not half 
so energetic in trying to keep his own as his grandson was in try- 
ing to recover what had been lost. An incident connected with 
the battle of Rowton Heath will serve to exemplify this. Never 
did king have better champion than Charles had on that day, in 
the able knight Sir Marmaduke Langdale. The knight in ques- 
tion had gained a marked advantage over his adversary, the 
equally able Poyntz. To cheer the king, then beleaguered in 
Chester Castle, with the news, Sir Marmaduke despatched Colonel 
Shakerley. He could not have commissioned a better man. The 
colonel contrived to get into Chester after crossing the Dee in a 
tub, which he worked with one hand, while he towed his horse 
after him with the other. He delivered his message, and offered 
to convey an answer or instructions back to Sir Marmaduke, and 
by the same means, in a quarter of an hour. The king hesitated ; 
some sanction required for a certain course of action proposed by 
Sir Marmaduke was not given, and Poyntz recovered his lost 
ground, defeated the royal horse, and thus effectually prevented 
Charles from obtaining access to Scotland and Montrose. 

I have given some illustrations of the means by which knight- 
hood was occasionally gained : an amusing illustration remains to 
be told. Dangeau, in his memoirs, speaks of two French peer- 
esses who lived chiefly upon asses' milk, but who, nevertheless, 
became afflicted with some of the ills incident to humanity, and 
were ordered to take physic. They were disgusted with the pre- 
scription, but got over the difficulty charmingly by physicking the 
donkey. It was not an unusual thing in France for very great 
people to treat their vices as they did their ailments, by a vicarious 
treatment. Catherine de Medicis is one out of many instances of 



PIECES OF ARMOR. 471 

this. She was desirous of succeeding in some great attempt, and 
set down her failure to the account of her sins. She instantly de- 
clared that she would atone for the latter, provided her desires 
were accomplished, by finding a pilgrim who would go from France 
to Jerusalem, on foot, and who at every three steps he advanced 
should go back one. The wished-for success was achieved, and 
after some difficulty a pilgrim was found, strong enough, and suffi- 
ciently persevering to perform the pilgrimage. The royal pledge 
was redeemed, and there only remained to reward the pilgrim, 
who was a soldier from the neighborhood of Viterbo. Some say 
he was a merchant ; but merchant or soldier, Catherine knighted, 
ennobled, and enriched him. His arms were a cross and a branch 
of palm tree. We are not told if he had a motto. It, at all 
events, could not have been nulla vestigia retrorsum. They who 
affirm that the pilgrim was a merchant, declare that his de- 
scendants lost their nobility by falling again into commercial ways 
— a course which was considered very derogatory, and indeed, 
degrading, in those exclusive days. 

I may mention here that Heraldry has, after all, very unfairly 
treated many of the doers of great deeds. No person below the 
degree of a knight could bear a cognizance of his own. Thus, 
many a squire may have outdone his master in bravery ; and in- 
deed, many a simple soldier may have done the same, but the 
memory of it could not go down to posterity, because the valiant 
actor was not noble enough to be worthy of distinction. In our 
English army, much the same rule still obtains. Illustrious in- 
competence is rewarded with " orders," but plain John Smith, who 
has captured a gun with his own hands, receives a couple of sover- 
eigns, which only enable him to degrade himself by getting drunk 
with his friends, Our heraldic writers approve of this dainty way 
of conferring distinctions. An anonymous author of a work on 
Heraldry and Chivalry, published at Worcester "sixty years 
since," says — "We must consider that had heraldry distributed 
its honors indiscriminately, and with too lavish a hand, making no 
distinction between gentry and plebeians, the glory of arms would 
have been lost, and their lustre less refulgent." 

But it is clear that the rule which allowed none to bear cogni- 
zance who was not of the rank of a knight, was sometimes in- 



472 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS 

fringed. Thus, when Edward the Black Prince made the stout 
Sir James Audley, his own especial knight, with an annuity of 
five hundred marks, for gallant services at Poictiers, Audley 
divided the annuity among his four squires, Delves, Dutton, Foul- 
thurst, and Hawkeston, and also gave them permission to wear his 
own achievements, in memory of the way in which they had kept 
at his side on the bloody day of Poictiers. 

The fashion of different families wearing the same devices had, 
however, its inconveniences. Thus, it happened that at this very 
battle of Poictiers, or a little before it, Sir John Chandos recon- 
noitring the French army, fell in with the Seigneur de Clerment, 
who was reconnoitring the English army. Each saw that the 
device on the upper vestment of his adversary was the same as 
his own, blue worked with rays of gold round the border. They 
each fell to sharp, and not very courteous words. The French 
lord at length remarked that Sir John's claim to wear the device 
was just like " the boastings of you English. You can not invent 
anything new," added the angry French knight, " but when you 
stumble on a pretty novelty, you forthwith appropriate it." After 
more angry words they separated, vowing that in next day's fight, 
they would make good all their assertions. 

As the general rule was, that squires could not bear a cogni- 
zance, so also was it a rule that knights should only fight with 
their equals. 

For knights are bound to feel no blows 

From paltry and unequal foes ; 

Who, when they slash and cut to pieces, 

Do all Avith civilest addresses. 

It is in allusion to this rule that Don Quixote says to Sancho 
Panza : " Friend Sancho, for the future, whenever thou perceivest 
us to be any way abused by such inferior fellows, thou art not to 
expect that I should offer to draw my sword against them ; for I 
will not do it in the least ; no, do thou then draw and chastise them 
as thou thinkest fit ; but if any knight come to take their part, 
then will I be sure to step in between thee and danger." 

Knights, as I have said, have had honor conferred on them for 
very strange reasons, in many countries, but in none for slighter 
reasons, perhaps, than in France. We may probably except 



PIECES OF ARMOR. 473 

Belgium ; for there is a living knight there, who obtained his 
order of chivalry for his pleasant little exhibition of gallantry in 
furnishing new-laid eggs every morning at the late queen's table, 
when every hen but his, in the suburban village of Laecken had 
ceased to lay ! 

Dumas, in his " Salvandire," satirically illustrates how knights 
were occasionally made in the days of Louis XIV. The hero of 
that dashing romance finds himself a captive in the prison of Fort 
l'Eveque ; and as the king will not grant him permission to leave, 
he resolves to leave without permission. He makes the attempt 
by night, descends from the window in the dark, is caught by the 
thigh on a spike, and is ultimately carried to a cell and a bed 
within his prison-walls. The following day the governor waits 
upon him, and questions him upon the motives for his dangerous 
enterprise. The good governor's curiosity is founded solely on 
his anxiety to elicit from the prisoner, that the desire of the latter 
to escape was not caused by his dissatisfaction with any of the 
prison arrangements, whether of discipline or diet. The captive 
signs a certificate to that effect, adding, that his sole motive for 
endeavoring to set himself free, was because he had never done 
anything to deserve that he should be put under restraint. A few 
days after, the governor announces to the recluse that the certifi- 
cate of the latter has had an excellent effect. Roger supposes 
that it has gained him his liberty ; but the governor complacently 
remarks that it has done better than that, and that the king, in 
acknowledgment of the strict character of the governor's surveil- 
lance, has created him chevalier of the order of St. Louis. If 
all the prisoners had succeeded in escaping, as nearly as Roger, 
the governor would probably have been made Knight of the Holy 
Ghost ! The king of France had many such faithful servants ; 
but history affords many examples of a truer fidelity than this ; 
particularly the old romances and legendary history — examples 
of faithfulness even after death ; but, though there may be many 
more romantic in those chronicles, I doubt if there is any one so 
touching as the proof of fidelity which a knighted civilian, Sir 
Thomas Meautis, gave of his affection for Lord Bacon, to whom 
that ancient servant of the great lawyer, erected a monument at 
his own cost. Hamond Lestrange relates a curious incident, to 



474 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

show that these two were not divided even after death. " Sir 
Thomas," says Lestrange, " was not nearer to him living than 
dead ; for this Sir Thomas ending his life about a score of years 
after, it was his lot to be inhumed so near his lord's sepulchre, 
that in the forming of his grave, part of the viscount's body was 
exposed to view ; which being espied by a doctor of physic, he 
demanded the head to be given to him ; and did most shamefully 
disport himself with that skull which was somewhile the continent 
of so vast treasures of knowledge." 

Other knights have been celebrated for other qualities. Thus, 
Sir Julius Caesar never heard Bishop Hackett preach without 
sending him a piece of money. Indeed, the good knight never 
heard any preacher deliver a sermon without sending him money, 
a pair of gloves, or some other little gift. He was unwilling, he 
said, to hear the "Word of God, gratis. 

Other knights have cared less to benefit preachers, than to set 
up for makers or explainers of doctrines themselves. Thus the 
Chevalier Kamsay held that Adam and Eve begot the entire 
human race in Paradise, the members of which fell with their pro- 
creators ; and in this way the chevalier found in an intelligible 
form " the great, ancient, and luminous doctrine of our co-exist- 
ence with our first parents." The Chevalier deemed that in 
teaching such doctrine he was rearing plants for a new Paradise ; 
but he was not half so usefully engaged as some brother knights 
who were practically engaged as planters. We may cite Sir 
John St. Aubyn, who introduced plane-trees into Cornwall in 
1723; and Sir Anthony Ashley, the Dorchester knight, who 
enjoys the reputation of having introduced cabbages into England 
about the middle of the sixteenth century. 

In contrast with these useful knights, the person of the once 
famous Chevalier de Lorenzi seems to rise before me, and of him 
I will now add a few words, by way of conclusion to my miscel- 
laneous volume. 

It is perhaps the tritest of platitudes to say that men are dis- 
tinguished by various qualities ; but it is among the strangest if 
not most novel of paradoxes, that the same man should be re- 
markable for endowments of the most opposite quality. The ec- 
centric knight whose name and title I have given above, is, how- 



PIECES OP ARMOR. 475 

ever, an illustration of the fact ; namely, that a man may be at 
once stupid and witty. It was chiefly for his stupidity that Lo- 
renzi was famous, a stupidity which excited laughter. I must, 
nevertheless, say in behalf of the brother of the once celebrated 
minister of France at the Court of Florence, in the days of 
Louis XV., that his stupidity so often looks like wit, as to induce 
the belief that it was a humor too refined for his hearers to ap- 
preciate. 

Acute as Grimm was, he seems to have undervalued the cheva- 
lier in this respect. That literary minister-plenipotentiary of the 
Duke of Saxe Gotha could only see in the chevalier the most ex- 
traordinary of originals. He acknowledges, at the same time, 
Lorenzi's high feeling of honor, and his frank and gentle spirit. 
The chevalier was crammed with scientific knowledge, but so con- 
fusedly that, according to Grimm, he could never explain himself 
in an intelligible way, or without exciting shouts of laughter on 
the part of his hearers. Madame de Geoffrin, when comparing 
the chevalier with the ungraceful M. de Burigny, said that the 
latter was awkward in body, but that Lorenzi was awkward in 
mind. As the latter never spoke without, at least, an air of pro 
found reflection, and had therewith a piquant Florentine accent, 
his mistakes were more relished. I do not think much of his mis- 
apprehension when introduced, at Lyons, to M. de la Michaudiere, 
in whose company he dined, at the residence of the commandant 
of the city. The gentleman was addressed by an old acquaintance 
as Le Michaudiere, and Lorenzi, mistaking this for L'Ami Chau- 
diere, persisted in calling the dignified official by the appellation 
of Monsieur Ghaudiere, which, to the proud intendant of Lyons, 
must have been as bad as if the chevalier had certified that the 
intendanfs father was a brazier. 

He was far more happy, whether by chance or design, I can 
not say, at a subsequent supper at M. de la Michaudiere's house. 
At the table sat M. le Normant, husband of Madame de Pompa- 
dour, then at the height of her brilliant infamy. Lorenzi hearing 
from a neighbor, in reply to an inquiry, that the gentleman was 
the consort of the lady in question, forthwith addressed him as 
Monsieur de Pompadour, which was as severe an infliction as 
husband so situated could well have endured. 



476 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

This honorable chevalier was clearly not a religious man — 
but among knights and other distinguished personages in France, 
and elsewhere, at the period of which I am treating, the two terms 
were perfectly distinct, and had no necessary connection. Accord- 
ingly, a lady who had called on Lorenzi one Sunday morning, 
before eleven o'clock, proposed, at the end of then* conversation, 
to go with him to mass. " Do they still celebrate mass ?" asked 
the chevalier, with an air of astonishment. As he had not attend- 
ed mass for fifteen years, Grinim gravely asserts that the Floren- 
tine imagined that it was no longer celebrated. " The more," adds 
the epistolary baron, "that as he never went out before two 
o'clock, he no longer recollected that he had seen a church-door 
open." 

The chevalier, who was Knight of the Order of St. Stephen of 
Tuscany, and who had withdrawn from the French Army, with 
the rank of colonel, after the conquest of Minorca, had a great 
devotion toward the abstract sciences. He studied geometry and 
astronomy, and had the habit, says Grimm, to measure the events 
of life, and reduce them to geometrical value. As he was 
thoughtful, he more frequently, when addressed, made reply to 
abstruse questionings of his own brain than to persons who 
spoke to him. Grimm, after saying that the Knight of St. Stephen 
was only struck by the true or false side of a question, and never 
by its pleasant or amusing aspect, illustrates his saying by an an- 
ecdote, in which many persons will fail to find any remarkable 
point. Grimm encountered him at Madame Geoffrin's, after his 
return from a tour in Italy. " I saw him embroiling his senses 
with the genealogies of two ladies in whose society he passes his 
life, and who bear the same name, although they are of distinct 
families. Madame Geoffrin . endeavored to draw him from these 
genealogical snares, observing to him : — ' Really, chevalier, you 
are in your dotage. It is worse than ever.' ' Madame,' answered 
the chevalier, ' life is so short !' " Grimm thought he should have 
done rank injustice to posterity if he had not recorded this reply 
for the benefit of future students of laconic wit. And again : — 
Grimm shows us the chevalier walking with Monsieur de St. 
Lambert toward Versailles. On the way, the latter asked him 
his age. " I am sixty," said the knight. " I did not think you so 



PIECES OF ARMOR. 477 

old," rejoined his friend. " Well," replied the chevalier, " when 
I say sixty, I am not indeed quite so old, just yet ; but — " " But 
how old are you then, in reality ?" asked his companion. " Fifty- 
five, exactly ; but why may I not be allowed to accustom myself 
to change my age every year, as I do my shirt ?" 

One day, he was praising the figure of a lady, but instead of 
saying that she had the form of a nymph, he said that her shape 
was like that of Mademoiselle Allard. "Oh!" cried Grimm, 
'• you are not lucky, chevalier, in your comparison. Mademoiselle 
Allard may be deservedly eulogized for many qualities, but no- 
body ever thought of praising her shape." " Likely enough," said 
Lorenzi, " for I do not know, nor, indeed, have I ever seen her ; 
but as everybody talks about Mademoiselle Allard, I thought I 
might talk about her too." 

If there was satire in this it was not of so neat a quality as 
that exhibited by him at Madame Greffon's, where he was spend- 
ing an evening with Grimm and D'Alembert. The last two were 
seated, and conversing. Lorenzi stood behind them, with his back 
to the chimney-piece, and scarcely able to hold up his head, so 
overcome was he by a desire to sleep. " Chevalier," said Grimm, 
" you must find our conversation a horrid bore, since you fall 
asleep when you are on your legs." " Oh, no !" exclaimed the 
chevalier, " you see I go to sleep when I like." The naivete 
with which he insinuated that he liked to go to sleep rather than 
listen to the small talk of a wit and a philosopher, was expressed 
with a delicious delicacy. 

Of his non-sequential remarks Grimm supplies several. He 
was once speaking disparagingly of M. de St. Lambert's know- 
ledge of chess. "You forget," said the latter, "that I gained 
fifteen louis to your thirty sous, during our campaign in Minorca.' 
" Oh, ay," answered the knight, " but that was toward the end of 
the siege !" 

It was at this siege that he used to go to the trenches with 
his astronomical instruments, to make observations. He one day 
returned to his quarters without his instruments, having left 
them all in the trenches. " They will certainly be stolen," said a 
friend. " That can't be," said Lorenzi, " for I left my watch with 
them." 



478 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. 

And yet this " distraught" knight was the cause, remote cause, 
of the death of Admiral Byng. He discovered, by mere chance, 
in his quarters at Minorca, a book of signals as used by the En- 
glish fleet. He hastened with it to the Prince de Beaubeau, who, 
in his turn, hastened to place it before the Marshal de Richelieu. 
The commanders could scarcely believe in their good fortune, but 
when the naval combat commenced it was seen that the English 
observed this system of signals exactly. "With this knowledge 
it was easy to anticipate all their manoeuvres, and they were ob- 
liged to withdraw with disgrace, which Byng was made to 
expiate by his death. The chevalier never thought of ask- 
ing for a reward, and his government entirely forgot to give 
him one. 

When about to accompany M. de Mirepoix, who was appointed 
embassador to London, he packed up his own things and that so 
perfectly that it was not till he had sent them off that he discov- 
ered he had left himself nothing to travel in but the shirt and 
robe-de-chambre which he wore while employed in thus disposing 
of the rest of his wardrobe. 

He lived in a small apartment at the Luxembourg, as persons 
of like rank and small means reside in the royal palace at Hamp- 
ton Court. One day, on descending the staircase he slipped, and 
broke his nose. On looking round for the cause of his accident, 
he observed a whitish fluid on the steps ; and, calling the porter, 
he rated him soundly for allowing this soapy water to remain on 
the staircase. " It is barley water," said the porter, " which a 
waiter from the cafe spilled as he carried it along." " Oh ! if 
that be the case," replied the chevalier, in a mild tone, and with 
his hand up to his mutilated nose, " if that be the case, it is I who 
am in the wrong." 

Grimm adds, in summing up his character, that he was richer 
in pocket handkerchiefs than any other man. As his apartment 
was just under the roof of the palace, and that he, almost every 
day on going out, forgot to take a handkerchief with him, he 
found it less trouble to buy a new than to ascend to his room and 
procure an old one. Accordingly, a mercer in his neighborhood 
had a fresh handkerchief ready for him every day. 

The history of eccentric knights would make a volume of 



AUG 3 



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PIECES OF AEMOR. 479 

itself. Here, therefore, I will conclude, grateful to the readers 
who may have honored me by perusing any portion of the mis- 
cellaneous pages which I have devoted to illustrations of chivalry, 
and, adding a remark of Johnson, who says, touching the respect 
paid to those who bear arms, that "The naval and military 
professions have the dignity of danger, and that mankind 
reverence those who have got over fear, which is so general a 
weakness." 



THE END. 



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